UPnP User Interface causes Explorer to hang in My Network Places?

I’ve been having some problems with Explorer hanging when opening “My Network Places” on some of my machines. Some work fine, some hang. Most annoying. I’ve been trying a few things over the past few weeks (as and when I get a hang and as and when I feel like it), but nothing has seemed to have fixed anything, until this morning…

I’ve recently adjusted my networking kit and now have a couple of UPnP devices floating around and it’s useful (but not essential) to be able to connect to them directly in Explorer. One of my machines didn’t have this enabled so I went in to Add Remove Windows Components and enabled it (UPnp User Interface, under Networking Services). What do you know, now that machine hangs in My Network Places…

Removing the UPnP User Interface from the machine removed the hang. Removing it from another machine that was hanging removed the hang… Removing it from a third… You get the idea…

I know enough about these kind of things to know that a) it’s early days and the hangs might return, and b) this could just be a coincidence… But, well, at least at present, it works for me…