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My Windows XP SP2 boots up normally (with wallpaper, taskbar, and Time Display)...then for about 20-30 seconds, my computer is Idle [note: it is NOT frozen....I can access programs normally] then, and only after the 20-30 pause does my LAN connection show up on the icon tray, and my Bitdefender 10 Internet Security loads up. I have removed the Bitdefender for other reasons now, so now the "Your Antivirus may be out of date" alert comes up.

Anyone know what the problem could be? I System Restored to a point where this did not occur, but to no help. I've scanned my PC with Trend Micro Office Client for viruses, trojans, spyware and other malware. I have also scanned using Ad-Aware SE and Windows Defender. Nothing comes up, so I'm assuming its a corrupted file and not spyware.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks agian.

Hey elint6!
Welcome to PC Helpforum!

When did this problem start?

Blue

This problem started about a week ago....I have even tried System Restore to a date previous to the start of the problem, to no avail.

When you open TaskManager (Ctrl + Shift + Escape), on your start-up, what does it say about CPU usage in the 'useless' seconds?

The taskmanager displays CPU usage at 1-2%...aka the computer is pretty idle. If i disable my NIC, then Windows starts up normally on the next boot. It seems that while my computer is stuck on the wallpaper, the NIC is acquiring a network address--it takes 15-20 seconds to do that!

This only started happening all of a sudden, and I haven't changed my ISP.

Any ideas?

hello, elint6!
Welcome to the forum!

Go through your anti-spyware and anti-virus programs properties /settings and see if any of them have a scan on boot ticked or is set to take a system snapshot on boot. Updates came through last week and there may have been something changed...These types of programs will sometimes shut down the nic card so as to do a quick scan before allowing web trafic in.

if it still causes problems then I would uninstall the NIC card and reinstall it with the newest drivers available.