I am trying to help a friend fix a "slow boot" problem in XP Home. She has a DSL modem connected to a network adapter. She has a dynamic IP address, where the modem acts as a DHCP server. She needs to run some sort of program to start her internet session. Whenever she boots the machine, there is an endless wait before XP finishes starting. Another piece of information is that if she unplugs her network connector, the machine boots quickly. I believe that at boot time the network driver senses that the network is "up" and tries to get an IP address from the DHCP server and the modem doesn't respond and waits to time out. Is there any way to change the timeout value or something equivalent? I found ways to do this under NT4, but not under XP. I thought about trying to start the network driver as part of some sort of script that also starts the internet connection, but I think that would only delay the startup problem until she tried to establish the internet connection. The DHCP service is not available until after the network needs to be running.
 
Thank you