Ok, my new computer is a Q6600, Asus P5E, 4GB DDR2 800 RAM, twin Radeon HD 3870s and two 250GB Western Digital 7200rpm HDs.
 
When i turn the computer on (takes around a minute) After symantec and this Asus AI Gear 3 has loaded up on the system tray, the computer hangs for about 15-20 seconds before msn and ati ccc load up. during this time everything is slower, but as well as that ie wont actually connect to a site at all.
 
So i have narrowed it down to two causes that i can think of, either its the Asus network drivers causing it, or its the streamlined xp disk i used (which contained SP2 and some RAID drivers so it could be installed on a RAIDed system). My brother also uses an asus motherboard and the same XP disk and his hangs on startup as well, however his actually brings up an error saying the network cable is unplugged whilst its 'hanging' so its most likely to be the network drivers.
 
Any other suggestions as to the cause? And also any idea on how to stop it? Its not a huge problem as 15 seconds isnt long at all, but if it can be fixed ide like to try!
 
Thanks

I think someone else was having this problem and it did come down to the network drivers.

Ah ok, thanks.
 
Any idea if they solved it?

Let me dig up the post. I'm pretty sure there is something about it on the ASUS forums.

Nice one, thanks.

I had a similar problem.  I was using AVG antivirus and found the problem went away when I switched to Avast.  Could be the same in your case, I just thought I'd throw that out there in case you are using AVG.  I remember suspecting the network drivers during my troubleshooting as well.

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I use Symantec, but i tried uninstalling it and booting up and it still hung.

It sounds like you have a lot of things in your start up. If you want a faster startup, disable some of those things.
 
Also, if you have more than one network adapter, disable the one that is not in use. Same thing if you are using wireless.
 
Basically, any network device that is active, but not connected may search for a DHCP server, and time out, then give itself an APIPA address. That could be what is causing the hang.

All that loads on startup is this Asus AI Gear, Symantec, MSN and ATI CCC.
 
Ill check for inactive network drivers as well though.

Any other suggestions? Network driver seems to be the most likely so far...

I read a post on another forum in which someone went into msconfig and disabled the "server" Microsoft service to fix a similar problem.  This service sets up printer and/or file sharing during bootup, I believe.  Anyway, for the other forum post, the system was hanging when loading "server".  Maybe give that a try?

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Thanks, ill look into that. Sounds promising!

its probably the network. try this, when pc starts up and hangs open up task manager, go to process's and end the "explorer.exe" then go to new task and run "explorer.exe" again. If it works properly then the explorer should start instantly after the command. Then disable all network devices and restart the pc and see if the problem is gone.