Network drive crashes explorer

So I have a user, with a network drive mapped as P: and when he opens My Computer and double-clicks the P drive it takes anywhere between 2 - 3 minutes to load. End users, being impatient, click on it to the point of it "not responding" and crashing explorer.
Thing of it is, I created a shortcut on his desktop to the location of the files where is P: drive maps to, and there is no delay when he uses the shortcut, just the network drive. So for the time being the shortcut will work as a bandage, but I'd like to know what the root problem is and how to permanently fix it.

Actually there aren't any errors in the event log at the time of this taking place. I did find an interesting work-around that seems to be working for the time being. I remapped the network drive using the IP rather than the name of the machine where the files are being accessed. Probably means there is something wrong with DNS somewhere.

brady said:

is this the only user having to remap to the IP? DNS problems generally don't simply affect 1 user.

Yeah, he's the only one. Tried flushing the DNS on his machine, didn't help.