This problem is unlike any I've seen before. Here's what happens:

Booting the machine is fine; however, after loading up a few of the startup programs, the machine has a tendency to stall for around 3-5 minutes while loading the Local Area Connection network adapter as visible in the system tray. After the stalling, the remainder of the startup programs load in the tray and network functionality continues.

There's 2 network adapters: Local Area Connection & Hamachi

Sometimes the programs that load before it stalls have connectivity, sometimes not.. these include Xfire, AIM, & a batch script I have that updates dyndns.

Hamachi, which autostarts as well, also errors by complaining about firewall software blocking UDP port 67 traffic. I highly suspect that the failure to initialize the Local Area Connection is causing this, since as soon as Local Area Connection does load, Hamachi works just fine.

Other Symptoms and Analysis:
-No association of user names to processes (they are blank) via task manager during the stalling process
-Event Viewer shows no sign of problems after remedying the ones I had dealing with DCOM errors and the latest ATI drivers.
-Problem persisted even with NOD32, Zonealarm, and VNC Server disabled (as well as their services).
-Used winsockxpfix
-Did a sfc /scannow
-Done a full in-depth analysis with NOD32
-Scanned with Pestpatrol
-System restored to a point 3 days ago (that was the oldest point as system restore is set to use minimal hdd usage)
-The Visible boot sequence of the icons in the tray are as follows:
1. PestPatrol
2. KFWS Web Server
3. HDD health
4. Daemon Tools
5. AIM
6. Hamachi
7. Xfire
8. Googletalk
9. Logitech Setpoint software
10. Volume control
11. Zonealarm
***STALLS***
12. NOD32 Control Center
13. VNC Server
14. Powerstrip
15. Local Area Connection

The problem occurred when I rebooted for the first time in 6 days. In that amount of time, there are only 2 major things I had changed that I could remember... installing Trillian and using CCleaner. I have a feeling that CCleaner may have removed something vital by accident.

While there may not be a clear solution to the unclear problem, does anyone know of any way to debug the entire boot sequence for windows xp (pro)?

I have the windows debugging tools and debugwiz, but not sure if they are capable of making a dump of the boot sequence.

On a side note, today I have been getting notified that the Local Area Connection is unplugged during moderate network activity (browsing and such). Not sure if the router is going bad or if my on-board NIC is failing and causing the router to overwork itself due to lost packets (which may be causing this whole issue). Resetting the router fixes the problem, but I will be testing another NIC in the machine to see the results of this, as well as analyzing the network via Ethereal to see if there's any unnatural packet loss. So it is a possibility this may be a hardware issue. Any ideas to try or questions are welcome

Well, I decided to reinstall win xp pro... and I'm recognizing no slow bootup yet; however, now web browsing (within 10 seconds) is almost guaranteed to crash the router. It's only that machine too, not the laptop or anyone else's... Anyone else think it may be a hardware problem? Unfortunately, all my spare NICs are too old (ISA... PCI cards meant for DOS/Win9x) :-/