Hmm, just tried it. Looks promising......
Mike-Bracknell was also on-track towards a solution.
I've tried Start/MScfg and eliminated a lot of start-up memory-sucking parasitic "lodgers". That had also made a notable difference.
Killing off the MS Network Discovery bug seems to produce sustained Windows Explorer goodness and amicable behaviour. Time will tell. But it's always returned in the past to haunt progress.