Two PCs, home LAN. No problems for years until I upgraded one PC to SP2. I was upgrading to SP2 one at a time to see what problems I may/may-not have.

Here's the scenario: Any shared folder opened on SP2 PC (firewall on) by SP1 PC takes about 30 seconds to open. During that time Explorer on SP1 shows 'not responding after a while' and opening another Explorer window hangs. Once the folder has been opened, subsequent opens or accesses are fine. However, if I wait some time (not sure the period, but many minutes...) the slow open happens again.

Further, if I turn off windows firewall on SP2, problem goes away and folders open quickly as expected.

This seems to be associated with the SP2 firewall, but is an odd behavior for a firewall problem.

Ideas are appreciated.

The control Panel applet for the new Windows Firewall has an Advanced
page where you can uncheck it for your LAN connection, leaving it on for
the Internet one.

Other tips here:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...ing+sp1&qt_g=1

That works, however, hen I do that, the windows firewall complains that it is off. However, if I uncheck the Internet NI, the firewall does not complain. That seems backwards to me.

I should have made it clear that both PCs are behind a NAT'd router. It should then be simple to exclude the 192.168.x.x addresses from the firewall without it then saying it is off.