The Old "Preparing Network Connections" Thing

[Doctor Trout]

I was wondering... does anyone know a good way of limiting the time it takes for a Windows 2000 Pro computer to display the message "Preparing Network Connections" at startup. I have a laptop. It's not connected to a network. It never will be. I've nLited the install to try to remove networking components. I have most services disabled. Essentially, I want to get rid of as many networking components as necessary, since I'll never use them. But, it still takes an uncomfortably long time to boot - usually waiting on the "Preparing Network Connections" message for a while. Can anyone think of anything else to disable that I might have missed? Or does anyone have a good fix for this - I know it's a common problem, but I haven't seen a common solution.

[Mr Snrub]

Most often I see delays at that point due to either:

- wireless NICs enabled and trying to search for WLANs

- persistent drive mappings attempting to restore when not available

Wired interfaces don't usually cause the delay if not connected as the interface state is reported as down, so the system is aware - wireless adapters don't have this of course, so if enabled the system will attempt to use them.

Disable any wireless NIC to see if you get an immediate speed increase.