QuartusII 7.1 Slow To Start Processing

I installed and began using QuartusII 7.1 last week. I noticed yesterday that everytime I click one of the GUI process buttons or select a Process to start in the Processing->Start-> submenu, the actual processing can take up to three minutes to begin. The WinXP Task Manager shows that quartus.exe is using about 4% of the total processing capacity of the workstation. The majority of the remaining time is spent in Idle. I have also noticed that there is a lot of network activity (icon in the Notification area of the task bar) during the time I am waiting for the processing to begin. The network activity stops as soon as the processing begins

System:

Two 3.0GHz Dual Core Xeon Dell Precision 690

WindowsXP SP2

Local License Server:

lmgrd 8.2.1.0

alterad 8.4

I have both 6.1 and 7.1 installed on my workstation. The 6.1 version does not exhibit this behavior.

I don't remember this being an issue until I set the Maximum processors allowed to parallel compilation to 3. I have since set it back to 1, restarted QuartusII 7.1, and rebooted my workstation. None of this has helped.

Has anyone else observed this behavior?