Hi, Yes, I was joking :-) I've seen this 'sidebar problem' once before.
The issue I have seen is that if my sidebar contains a link to a networked folder that has a custom icon, *and* I log out and then log back in, the sidebar tends to hang while it attempts to prompt for a password. There's obviously some bug in the way the computer asks for the password, since that's where it seems to hang. The thing that I find most befuddling is that a copy of the custom icon is kept in your sidebar file, so there should be no reason for the Finder to try to connect to the network just to display the icon! Are you running Tiger (10.4) or Panther (10.3). I've seen this with Panther but had no idea if it was "just me".
