Sherlock slows down Windows 2000 Server

a strange bug:
When the 32 macs on our 500 computer Ethernet network, of a mixed OS variety
( 7.6.1, 9.22, and OS X 10.26) are connected
to our Windows 2000 server, if one of the macs on 9.22 uses Sherlock
to search the hosted drives from the Server, the OS 9.22 clients are locked
out temporarily freezing, and are unable to work until
the search is over. Os X clients are not affected, nor OS 7.61.
The only differences I see are that the OS 9.22 clients have AppleTalk
enabled, the Mac OS X (10.26) clients have TCP with load Apple talk as
needed.

The OS 7.61 and 9.22 clients use Quark Xpress, which I know
has a dependency on AppleTalk.
They use it primarily all the time ( 19 clients).
The OS X clients do not have Quark, and don't have
any performance issues in the apps they are using
( Freehand, Photoshop).

IS this possible a an AppleTalk issue with Win 2000 server?
Or could it be something else?