Web service / settings startup delay

Hi

I have a strage problem. I have a web service, to which a client application (windows forms) is creating a reference at some point. This causes a variety of things to happen transparently. Among those things, .NET framework seems to be opening a variety of files, as shown by the smart filemon.exe program. The trouble is about per-user settings. When the client application is run on win xp, everything seems to go smoothly. It looks for some files, two of them (the per-user settings, which the application does not use in any place, but tries to open them anyway) are not found. This however does not cause any unwelcome behavior. The trouble starts when I try to run the application on windows embedded for point of service, for which the application is intended. Then the same situation happens (the two settings files are not found), but for some strange reason the application hangs on them for 10 seconds before it ceases to attempt to open them. Has anybody got any idea on how to go about this problem? May this be some configuration issue? Mind You that the client app does not use any per-user settings, and yet it attempts to open files containing them. Can framework be somehow told not to look for those files?

Thanks in advance,
Krzysieq