Delayed network connection on boot - Clean install

[BrantRaven]

Hi Everyone,

I decide to re-baseline my desktop home system with a fresh install of
Windows Vista Ultimate. Everything seemed to install correctly. Vista picked
up most of the drivers and I was able to supply the ones it didn’t.

After setup and re-boot, I noticed that the desktop/sidebar appears
reasonably fast, after which there is a delay of about a minute with some
disk activity during which the Network icon in System Tray has a red X. After
about a minute or so, there is a great deal of disk activity (the system
seems to be paging). The delay continues further until finally the yellow
exclamation symbol appears, quickly followed by the globe icon. The system
then functions as normal.

The delay can be anywhere between 1-3 minutes. My motherboard has 3 network
connections; 1 direct connection to my NAS server, 1 to the ADSL modem, 1
wireless.

I have spent the last 2 days trying to resolve this issue, so any help would
be greatly appreciated.

Brant

 

[Robert L. \(MS-MVP\)]

For troubleshooting, start the computer with clean boot.
Windows general
How to run Windows OS with a clean boot · How to Run Windows Safe Mode
with Networking · How to setup DHCP for IP Phone How to sort programs in
Start ...
www.howtonetworking.com/Windows/windowsgeneral.htm


--
Bob Lin, MS-MVP, MCSE & CNE
Networking, Internet, Routing, VPN Troubleshooting on
http://www.ChicagoTech.net
How to Setup Windows, Network, VPN & Remote Access on
http://www.HowToNetworking.com

 

[BrantRaven]

With respect Robert, your post isnt excatly helpful. I have started my
machine in safe mode...but this doesnt really allow me to discover the issue
unless I have an general idea of what the issue actually is..which at this
stage I dont.

In safe mode, the machine reacts exactly the same way in does in normal
mode. Again, I totally have no idea what the issue might be.

Brant

 

[BrantRaven]

To try and remediate the problem so far I have done a few things. Here is a
short list of what I have tried;

- Looked at the network hardware to ensure that a DHCP IP is being
delivered..it is.
- Looked at the NICs and ensured that power management and similar features
were not enabled
- Disabled wireless. I have read that the issue does happen with wireless.
Didnd work!!
- Disabled firewall. Didnt work!
- Disabled defender real time protection. Didnt work!!
- Disabled the workstation service. Didnt work!!
- Disabled SuperFetch. Didnt work!!

Tried a few other bits and pieces. Nothing seems to work.

Brant

 

[BrantRaven]

Thanks for the suggestions. I have tried several of these already but with no
luck at all. There doesnt seem to be anything obvious that is going wrong or
any particular component that is failing. This issue has been reported across
various tech sites and blogs. It seems to be a common problem and while
people have made suggestions for a fix nothing has seemed to solve the
problem.

Currently my system experiences at least a 3 minute delay after reboot.

Brant

 

[V Green]

Thanks for the suggestions. I have tried several of these already but with no
luck at all. There doesnt seem to be anything obvious that is going wrong or
any particular component that is failing. This issue has been reported across
various tech sites and blogs. It seems to be a common problem and while
people have made suggestions for a fix nothing has seemed to solve the
problem.

Currently my system experiences at least a 3 minute delay after reboot.

Brant

Try running with a fixed IP and see if it clears things up.

If it does, you now at least have a smaller subset of things to look at...

 

[BrantRaven]

I will try a fixed IP and see how things go...but I really doubt that this is
the issue. Doing an ipconfig immediately after the machine boots and when the
network indicates no connection, reveals a correct IP address...so it doesnt
seem to be this problem.

Lets keep in mind here that this is a totally clean Vista build with no
other issues. I cant imagine why you would require so much tweaking just to
get a clean build running properly.

Brant

 

[V Green]

I will try a fixed IP and see how things go...but I really doubt that this is
the issue. Doing an ipconfig immediately after the machine boots and when the
network indicates no connection, reveals a correct IP address...so it doesnt
seem to be this problem.

Lets keep in mind here that this is a totally clean Vista build with no
other issues. I cant imagine why you would require so much tweaking just to
get a clean build running properly.

Brant

Maybe it isn't completely a Vista issue,
such as a router incompatibility problem.

Several folks here have had weird things happen
with particular routers that was solved by updating
firmware or getting a different router.

Have you tried disabling ipV6 yet? That seems
to have helped some.

 

[BrantRaven]

I am just about to disable IPV6 and see how things go. The other thing I have
done is to disable NIC's that were not being used and on the NIC being used I
have set the speed and duplex, rather than have it set to Auto. This has
helped but not by a lot.

As far as the router goes....I would REALLY be surprised if this was the
issue. I have several machines (XP) connected to the same router...and there
is no issue. Also a previous install of Vista didnt have this issue. I will
be upgrading my router later this month...so we will see...but really I doubt
this is it.

So it seems the mystery continues.

Brant