Slow network startup

[driver]

My PC has an onboard LAN chip, 3Com Gigabit LOM (3C940), which
connects to a Draytek Vigor 2600 router.
Everything works fine except that when the PC boots or restarts WinXP,
it takes a long long time to start the network connection....up to 1
1/2 minutes after the other startup items have loaded.
Any idea how I can speed this up?

(I do not have IEEE802.1x authentication enabled.
My home network usually has one or two other PCs online when I bootup.
I have unticked all protocols except TCP/IP but this makes no
difference.)

 

[José Gallardo]

Start>Execute and type "msconfig" without quotes. What have you in "Start"? Have you ruled out the spyware?

 

[driver]

I think I am clear of spyware-I run Spywareguard and Spyware Blaster,
Adaware and Spybot-they all show me clean.
The only thing loading after the network connection is Mailwasher--and
even with that disabled, the network connection takes forever to load.
Everything before the network connection loads really fast, so I
assume it is the network adapter drivers which are the problem and
they are the latest available, 1.0.0.46.