Vista - Network search everytime opening explorer

I dont know if this is normal for Vista, but everytime i open explorer and
click on "Network" or any network shortcut then Vista first goes and searches
the whole network all over again. This takes a few minutes and makes browsing
the network quite painful.
Even if i use a mapped drive or manually enter the path in the address bar,
it still goes and searches the network over again. I thought of switching off
"network discovery" but then it would not "see" or be "seen"

Any thoughts on the above.

Thanks in advance