I'm trying to troubleshoot strange hangs/freezes in my Windows XP Pro
SP2 system, which is part of a Windows 2000 domain

The symptoms are: when I launch an application, or open a Folder in
Explorer or open Start->Run... dialog, the system freezes for several
seconds (mouse pointer works but the system is unresponsive, even
Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't help) then (usually) regain functionality.
Moreover, sometimes, when I try to start a program as a different user
through Shift-Right Click->Runas... Explorer completely hangs: I have
to Kill explorer.exe process and start it again.

Actions: I used Sysinternals FileMon and Process Explorer to try to
understand what's wrong and I discovered that explorer.exe continously
reports file not find errors for files (DLLs, mostly) in a folder
called "Y:\AndreaC\". Y:\ is mapped to my network home dir and AndreaC
is my username. Y:\AndreaC doesn't exists. With Process Explorer I
discovered that explorer.exe Current Dir is set to Y:\

Is that normal? Is there a way to set Current Dir for Explorer to an
existing local directory? Any other advice?

TIA,

Andrea