Spinning ball after sudden disconnect from AFP and LDAP

I'm in an office with several computers networked and authenticating to an Xserve via LDAP to mount several network share points via AFP. Most computers are 10.3.9, one is 10.4. Right now, there's a problem. When a person is logged into their machine through their LDAP account, with the network shares mounted, if they experience any interrupt in network access, the entire OS locks up with a spinning ball, even other applications that are running. Finally, OS X will give a 'Disconnected from Server message' after maybe a full minute. This happens even if network access is immediately restored after the hiccup (putting a loose ethernet cable back in or what have you). Sometimes the OS recovers after it gives the disconnect message and re-mounts all the user shares except for the user's Home folder which is on the Xserve, but there is always the spinning ball complete lockup.