If you’re also experiencing this problem, you’ll know what I’m talking about. A click on a link to a Word document in a SharePoint library and - well - It’s time to go fill your coffee-mug ! A nice little popup window tells you that the document is opening, so just in case your boss wonders why you’re at the coffee-machine – AGAIN – just show him the little window…

Or how about opening a documentlibrary as a share ? Same problem, your mousepointer become a nice little circle (assuming your are using Vista or Win7) and you have to wait ! (oh, there’s your boss again, asking you why he’s paying you).

The solution ? I spend numerous hours on the Internet, trying to find a solution for this very annoying problem. At first I was convinced that the problem was caused by a continuously expanding document-library, but apparently that wasn’t the source of all evil – no - this little check-box was responsible for all time lost (Internet Explorer – Tools – Internet Options – Connections -> LAN settings)  :

Even worse, this thing was pushed to everyone with a GPO : User configuration – Windows Settings – Internet Explorer Maintenance – Connection -> Automatic Browser Configuration

The result after unchecking the check-box next to “Automatically detect configuration settings” :

• Word documents now open immediately
• Opening a document-library as a share is really fast

/me happy !

This is where I found THE answer : Windows Explorer very slow when browsing SharePoint Libraries