Accessing a folder with 200,000+ files

In a lapse of good judgement a program was written to query a single folder for JPG files that number about 270,000 files that are 100K each. I have been asked by my boss to see if we can do anything to optimize the server to allow access to this folder via Windows Explorer. Currently it can’t be opened from a desktop and it pegs the processor and takes 25 minutes to open on the server.