Complete system lockup when opening publisher

We have been having this problem for a while and recently it started a second
system so now I can rule out the one laptop, but I'm hoping someone has a fix
for this.

The my documents are sync'd to the U: drive which is a network share.
Sometimes when the user opens publisher it will freeze and lockup the entire
system. You can move the mouse but that is all. Even Ctrl-Alt-Delete does
nothing. I have to hard power off and on the laptop to get windows
responding again. Everything else works just fine. But to get publisher
working again, I have to open regedit and browse to where the recently opened
files are for publisher. If I delete any reference to a recently opened
file from the user's My Documents (it lists all of the my docs files as from
the U: drive) and then exit regedit, publisher works just fine. I can leave
anything else in the recently opened files(C:, E:, etc...).

Any solution would be greatly appreciated.