Shortcuts broken, hanging startup

G'day!

Win 98SE running on IBM Thinkpad laptop. Set up to start
Excel 97 on startup and to load three often-used
spreadsheets. Used to work fine, now system hangs up when
it tries to load the spreadsheets. BUT, no problem
starting Excel manually and loading the spreadsheets the
old fashioned way.

BTW, machine is connected to a P2P network, accessing a
file server running XP Pro. The spreadsheets in question
load from the local hard drive.

Any thoughts on what might be happening?

TIA,

Frank