I've had same prob for some time, on several directories containing bunches of small .pngs and other trivial raster types... always thought it was long path/file names (200char+)... certain CG progs would also crash on accessing these dirs... <<oh yeah,,w2k/p4/1g proc/.5g ram>>
and BPJ (posted 11.11.04), you hit it on the head.! made me register just to say that.!