When Windows Explorer Acts Buggy

Recently, at work, my Windows XP machine started acting very strange: Windows Explorer took forever to list directories and appeared to be freezing up on occasion. When, after several re-boots the problem remained persistent I consulted with my Google friend.

The solution was relatively simple.

delete C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows

(or you could simply rename it if you don't like the word delete)

However, there is one caveat: you need to sign in as a different user with local-admin rights in order to delete this file because you can't delete this file as the current user.

Hope this helps someone.