NT Explorer takes FOREVER to launch!

NT 4.0, SP6, Dell Latitude C600 laptop, 256 mg ram: launch NT Explorer from any shortcut, or start, run or whatever, can take up to a minute OR MORE before it finally lands on the desktop. Nothing in event viewer or task manager to indicate hanging or anything of the sort. Not profile related, shortcut related or anything. It just takes forever to launch. Everything else runs fine, but won’t run if you launch explorer and the explorer window hasn’t popped up on the screen, yet. Help!