@bdearen did you disable your firewall and tried a reboot ? did you look into the event viewer (control panel,large pics,system management) ? did you trie removing the nic in device manager and reinstalling after boot ? i really think some service is giving you the long waiting on accuiering a network address at bootup
Unplug the wire from your NIC, restart and see if the problem persists. If it does, seems to be a driver problem (see next paragraph). If it does not then it seems to be a communication problem, probably with the DHCP server. Have you tried a different cable? Tried Static IP addressing for the NIC? Disabling all but TCP/IP protocol? reducing link speed to 10M/Half Duplex? Did the NIC get detected and installed automatically WITHOUT you loading any drivers? My rule of thumb is if Win7 detects and installs a driver, don't install a newer/ different driver unless it is through Windows Update...
one quick question : could you check if "Background intelligent Transfer Service" is enabled/automatic in services.msc ? to check type services.msc in the execute window and look for this service... take your time bro, i've got lots....
that's not allways true with older devices, but mostly that's the way to go, unless driver issues arise, which they always can. And installing an updated driver never hurts.
Tried disabling the firewall same problem. I tried removing the NIC from device manager and using the default windows7 drivers same problem. I also tried looking in the event viewer there is tons of stuff there not really sure what I am looking for. Background intelligent service is set to manual and is not in the "running" state at the moment.
look for errors, depicted by a red orb with a white cross, like this : relay error that you see to me. do you have a home network installed ? if so, turn off file and printersharing in tcp/ip settings of your nic.