My game PC has acquired this quirk from a week or so.

I start it up, Windows loads, and then, to be able to access the net... and here I do mean ALL the net, as in internet and the other PCs connected to the same router... between two and three minutes must be waited during which the PC is isolated.

Before a week or so, the PC connected to the net as soon Windows had loaded... then with no reason at all... here it is that wants to wait.

I've tried looking at the task manager in starting, using Skype as a monitoring application (since Skype won't start without a net connection, I know that when it starts is because such a net connection has come up) and it seems that the services responsible for the working of the net connections are loaded for last and after the time of waiting told of above.

What could be this strange behavior?

Please, help me understand and possibly resolve this annoyance.

If you've ruled out any possible spyware or virus issues, as unlikely as it may be, your nic might be failing. Do you have a second pci type network card you might try?

Wouldn't a failing nic induce errors while working? I mean... I can understand where your point of view comes, but I'm quite reluctant to give it body because once the net establishes the connection, it doesn't skip a beat.

Have several old but working PCI net cards, inheritance of sort of when I worked in the PC area, and in the next days might just give it a try...

Your probably right, I just thought it might be worth a shot.

Could still be a hard to find virus,just my idea.

Nope. No virus aboard.

DHCP release and renew on the router?

Groundbound1 wrote on May 19^th, 2012 at 3:23pm:

DHCP release and renew on the router?

That would affect ALL the PCs connected to the router and there's one sole PC that stalls in take off. More so, even using static IP the problem still stands, so I believe the router has no fault.

You're right again, didn't think about that. :-[ I'm just gonna be quiet now... ;D

Any suggestion is welcome, even the ones that once proven on the battleground result to be incorrect. :)

Better than be ignored. :(

The misbehavior is not so much a problem, inasmuch that after a pair of minutes the PC starts behaving normally, as an annoyance.

Looking at the Task Manager while waiting for the net to engage on that PC, I've seen that the loading of part of the software that controls the net gets... held up for a while (the already cited two minutes), then it  finally loads and everything works well. What could it be? :-/

Windows 7?

Nope, still XP SP3.

You mentioned you tried or were using a static IP for that machine...Was/is the static IP assigned on the router's end, the computer's end or both?

What I mean is, if you were to go to control panel-network connections-right click on "local area connection 'X' "- highlight "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)" and click on the properties button, does it have a bullet in "Obtain an IP address automatically" or "Use the following IP address", where you've told it which IP to use?

On start, ever since the installation of the OS, the IP was assigned automatically by the router (and still can if I want) with no problems at all. Then the lagging at start problem commenced and I found the IP and other various parameters assigned to the RS232 port the PC is connected to the router, when it still was DHCP, via Ipconfig.

Once having had the values I copied them verbatim in the fields of IP, Subnet Mask and Gateway of the TCP-IP stack of the OS in the hope that the assignment of a static IP would make the PC log in faster as before the annoyance started, but the situation remained stubbornly unchanged.


PS
If you want, I can supply screenshots.

I write here the solution to this odd problem so anyone should happen to have the same annoyance, he or she will know what to do.

Just open your PC end clean up all the heatsinkers, CPU, GPU and eventual others.

It was the CPU heatsinker, in my case, and I cleaned the GPU's one as well, just to be sure. The PC simply could not stand to be dirty inside, it seems. I cleaned it and now the PC is working again as before.

Mysteries of computers.