Taskbar Not Responsive Issues

I'm having trouble with Vista's taskbar being non-responsive for minutes at
a time.

Our organization maps several different shares to different drives, with
some being available offline, while others are not. One drive is the user's
personal files. Another drive is a 'common' drive where each user can store
files that are available to everyone as soon as they synchronize (which
happens on Vista automatically (usually)). Everyone shares the same desktop
and start menu via folder redirection and those icons/shortcuts are
administrator set and basic users can't change them. This lets me adjust
desktops or start menus as I need without having to go to each computer or a
script being run. I add the shortcut and seconds later, it is there.

Still with me? My problem is that for minutes at a time, the taskbar isn't
responsive. The mouse cursor either 'spins' or sometimes even gives the
'program is not responding'. If I close a program, the taskbar doesn't
update to reflect the change until the taskbar is responsive again. Our
laptops being Lenovo machines, they have the manual connection on the front
and as soon as we shut the wireless connection off (our primary connection
method, although this problem exists with wired connections as well), the
taskbar 'catches up' rather quickly and things go on their merry way. As
soon as the connection is restored, the taskbar will freeze up again.

Now you might say its a server share overload thing, but we've always had
the shared desktops running off this same server and the desktops that don't
have the redirected folders setup to be offline (actually offline files is
disabled on those machines) never have that taskbar freeze issue, which
leads me to believe its an offline files issue. I'm just not sure of how to
fix it. Its frustrating to get ready to do a presentation in front of a
large group of people only to have to wait while the taskbar catches up so
you can do what you need to do. (I'm aware of alt+tab, but some programs
like Outlook can minimize to the point of being outside the grasp of
alt+tab) Can't disconnect the network connection when the projector happens
to be a network projector..

I'm looking for help/tips towards resolving this.

Thanks for making it this far...

Nick

P.S. Using a different OS, using the Public folder on the local computer,
and not having the folder be redirected in the first place aren't acceptable
answers. I need to find a trick to making this work similar to how I have
it above, namely a centrally located folder that everyone shares that's
available even when the computer is offline and disconnected from the
corporate network.

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I'd put some famous quote here but I'm too lazy to go Windows Live Search
for one.