Quote Originally Posted by ssjenkins View Post
I never did find a solution . During some of the initial XP updates (after SP3 clean install) it would start to work normally but after installing all updates then it reverted back to the 90 second delay . It happens with both the internal NIC and a PCMCIA Wi-Fi card . I gave up looking for a fix .

Sammy
I've had the same problem, and I've registered on this site to tell you how I fixed mine.
I had to wait about 90 seconds for the icon to appear and just before it did a message about the firewall not being connected flashed up. (It was set to 'on'.)
So I turned off the firewall, then rebooted.
The network icon appeared about 2 seconds after the speaker icon.
Back to normal operation!
So I looked into the firewall's exeption list and there were 3 entries whereas before I turned it off there were many more.
I turned the firewall back on and the icon still appears within 2 seconds ??
I don't know how I fixed it but it's fixed.
Hope this helps somebody!