Spinning ball erratic but persistent

Hi,
I've read some threads w/ serious client delays and spinning ball activity. We get maybe a 2-5 minute spinning ball on one to two clients out of eight.
I can't find any configuration difference and it seems to go away on its own after a couple of good logins.
Anyone have suggestions on tweaking the client? We've already turned off auto_mount in hostconfig and set them not to sleep.
Modify spotlight behavior? Try static IPs rather than DHCP? Anything else?
thanks, jhb

If they are using network accounts (Open Directory Master etc) then flushing the mcx_cache might help.
On the clients macs affected launch Net Info Manager, authenticate and select config in the second column, select mcx_cache and click delete. Now remove the property lists from the Managed Preferences folder in /Library, unbind from the OD Master and rebind again, deselect the ‘Add DHCP-supplied LDAP severs’ option and use the IP address or better still the FQDN. When the user logs in again the mcx_cache recreates itself and gets rid of any accumalated logging problems. Its a good thing to do generally anyway, think of it as an LDAP spring clean.

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