I have seen reports that Windows XP is slow when accessing network shares. I use XP daily on my local home network and a corporate LAN. I haven't noticed the network slowness. But if you do, there are reports that deleting a particular registry key resolved the problem. It certainly works for Windows 2000. You can give it a try in XP. I would backup the key first.
To backup and delete the key, In the regedt32 registry editor navigate to the NameSpace key :
Right click {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}
Click Export. From the Export Registry File dialog box in the File Name text box :
Type the filename of your choice as in restoreshare
Click Save
This saves the file names (in my example), restoreshare.reg to the My Documents folder. Its now safe to delete the key.
Right click {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}
Click Delete
Click Yes in the Confirm Key Delete dialog box.
If your system is unstable or weird after deleting this key, you can restore the key. In Explorer, double-click on your reg file. This will restore the deleted registry key.