slow access to FAT32 partition

Hi: why does it take up to 1 min. to initially access folders/data on a FAT32 partition on our PC, and how can I fix this? My wife has XP Pro on fast PC (1.8 GHz Pentium, 512 MB RAM, etc.). Its 40G drive is partitionned into C: as NTFS with XP on it, and that's always the active partition = 18 G. The D: is the other partition, FAT32, again 18 G (there's no other hidden partitions). Used Partition Magic 6 1 yr. ago to set this up in anticipation of going to XP. The D: has the old w98se on it, but it's just there now, never used. But it also has all my wife's data, it's still used for that, we didn't move anything over, and this setup seems to work fine, except for this. This didn't used to occur before Christmas, built the PC in June, and I don't know what changed. Using Norton Systemworks 2003 or builtin defrag hasn't helped. Thanks.

 

Recent cleanup and defrag on the drive?

And if it is set for indexing, I'd suggest turning that off. Although I won't even swear Fat32 will do the indexing. I never use anything other than NTFS.