21 second pause during startup

following my 2nd HD crash in as many months (sigh) i have once again reinstalled windows, but this time i noticed that after i had started reinstalling software this pause has started during bootup.  the pause starts straight after autoexec finishes - it stops DEAD (black screen with little flashing cursor) for 17 seconds then there is a little HD activity and at 21 seconds the GUI pops up.  

If i had to guess at what point this started i would have to say it was pretty close to when i installed TCP/IP (forgot it during setup) and as an added clue, after the GUI popped up after the first time it paused there was a message saying something about DHCP messages "Yes or No" and i (stupidly) jammed on "No" so i could start trying to find the problem.  i have searched for DHCP options everywhere, but the only one is in TCP/IP and its greyed out...

i can feel myself aging waiting for this pause to finish...

thanks for your time.
ando.