OK, so here's what's going on.
We recently took a bunch of our servers offline here at work, and it's caused an issue with a fucking lot of PCs. Let me explain:
When you try to open files (via double-clicking the file), or try to right-click files, the system will hang for between 30 seconds and 2 minutes before the file opens.
I also know EXACTLY what's causing it.
One of the servers we took offline is used a lot during our imaging / building process. We had program installations (Ghost AutoInstall packages) hosted on that server and whatnot, as well as a multitude of other things. We've since moved everything over to our new server, but these problems started happening as soon as we took the old one offline. My dad had the exact issue 6 months ago at his place of employment, and both he and I came to the same conclusion: The Windows registry is still referencing that server all over the place for various shit. When you try to open a file or whatever, Windows is trying to find that server for some reason. It eventually times out, and the file either opens or you get the right-click context menu. The solution that I've found and can confirm works is to remove all references to that server in the registry. My system instantly began working again as it should.
Here's the REAL problem:
Our networking guys are being total douchefucks about it, and they won't believe a word of what I'm telling them. Now, I'm not really familiar with networking stuff, but their boss suggested that I have them CNAME the old server or some shit, so that when computers try to access the old server it's aliased to the new server. He's pretty sure that'll keep me from having to either manually remove references to the server from, oh, 1000 PCs, or try to come up with a script that'll remove the references and not hose machines.
If you've heard of this issue, and know what I might be able to google and then subsequently shove down their distinguished mentally-challenged gullets, please let me know.
