File Server Slowdown with Illustrator(only) saving and opening

Question

Hello,
I have a problem i have been struggling with for years.
When we save a file to the server, the time to open, save or export can be anywhere from 1-5 minutes. Its killing our productivity.
I have changed out every component. We have Eight illustrator CS3 13.0.2 users on C2D/i3/i7 iMacs running 10.6.7. They are connecting to a Mac 10.6.7 Server with AFP - mac mini 2.53 with a lacie 5 drive raid.
We have had this problem going back to at least 10.4.6 i think it was.  (I did not write good troubleshooting logs back then)
What appears to be happening:
open a file in the finder or in illustrator
if a font is missing, it immedialy pings you, so its like illustrator looks at the files and then is looking for something else  (problem exists if no fonts are present)
the mouse then beach balls and illustrator shows as not responsive
the server shows some activity on the cpu/network/hard drive side but its very minor. like a get info command on lots of files
local user shows very little to no activity
then it stops doing nothing after the few minutes and it opens quickly.
the content of the files does not effect the problem. A 10 meg files with lots of stuff takes maybe 4 minutes vs 3 min 50 seconds for a empty file
my solution so far:
I can clear the problem by running a script that deletes the illustrator prefs, mediabrowser.plist, deletes illustrator cache files, deletes apple quarantie events, bridge prefs. and a restart. Then files open in under 5 seconds. After a couple of hours or some times a day, the open times creep up to a minute, after a few days, they are 2-5 minutes.  Sometime clearing these files does not work and i have to then wipe a machine and do clean installs of everything.  Some Macs will not have the problem, and function great for a month and then they have the problem for no explainable reason.
All other functions work great, no problems anywhere with anything else, excempt saving illustrator files to the server.
We have tried moving the files locally and then copying them back, but we loose too much work with the errors associated with version control problems. Also a synced folder to the local machines of the server (yes that was intense on the machines) some how had the problem follow it on some macs but not others
I have tried illustrator CS4 and CS5 and it has the same problem
I am currently trying to brute force attack the problem, I figure i can reduce the wait time to maybe 20% with a Mac pro and a bank of SSD's. my cost is almost 8k. I am not happy giving up on fixing the bug, but we have at least 1-2 people waiting around at any given time. 
Any thoughts on the problem or a solution?

Answer 1

To create a new Swatches panel to store pattern swatches you have to:
a) Open the Swatches panel and delete all the swatches that you don't want (optional)
b) Choose Save Swatch Library as AI (not ASE) from the Swatches panel menu (I suggest you to save it on the Desktop! So you can easily find that!).
The saved file is actually a simple (blank) Illustrator file.
To use this file with other Illustrator projects choose Window > Swatch Library > Other Libraries and navigate to the saved Illustrator file (Desktop).
At this point another swatches panel is opened on the screen.
Drag the desired swatches from this new  panel to the document one. Then close the new panel.
I hope this help