Here is something that could work, this guy says its probably missing network paths issue, not sure if it is:
Short answer (for those TL;DR guys out there):
Non existing network paths is the problem here. Solution is to re-link the assets by a script before opening a .max file.
Here the proper answer:
I can't tell exactly who is the culprit here, if it's 3dsmax, Windows, network card/drivers or the network itself, but the fact is that once you load a texture into your max file from a network you end up with 3dsmax checking that network path every time you open the scene. Which is correct, right? Unfortunately this becomes a problem when that network path no longer exists. For some reason it takes a long time for 3rdsmax/windows/network card to figure out that the network path doesn't exist anymore and if you have a scene file with dozens of textures then it can take 10 or more minutes to open it. I observes this varries on different setups and networks.
Anyway, the solution that I found is to re-link the network paths of assets (textures, xrefs, etc.) in the scene file before opening it by using Maxscript. Just search for "getMAXFileAssetMetadata" and "setMAXFileAssetMetadata". I made a simple script using those functions which takes a .max file of your choosing, looks for any assets within the file with network paths and re-links those paths to local space. It's quite simple and doesn't allow much of customization (let alone error checking) so I don't dare to upload it here but if anybody's interested feel free to PM me or write me an e-mail and I'll send you the script. I use it successfuly on old files and they all load very quickly now.
