Hi all, I have a feeling that perhaps the motherboard is a duff, but please take a look below and let me know what you think.

AMD Athlon 3600, Asus A8V Mainboard, 3Gb RAM
Clean install of XP Pro, ESET antivirus, Firefox. Nothing else on there. Only put it together this weekend.
Using on-board network, separate AGP graphics card.
All the latest drivers and updates installed.

From power on it boots fine to the desktop, and is responsive as expected... BUT... the network icon does not show up for about 2 mins. If I open internet explorer, then it does not load until that 2 mins has passed, then suddenly IE loads and the network icon appears.
Same thing if I right click "my network places" and select properties.

I've no idea what is causing this delay, as nothing yet has been installed to clog it up.

Occasionally the internet has just stopped working. IE shows usual no connection message while firefox and chrome show a blank page. But if I ping google.com, it responds fine. Only way to get it back is a reboot.

Possibly related issue is that sometimes a soft restart will not work, as the monitors don't come out of standby on the boot. Works fine if the PC is powered off and powered on though. I'd normally think this was more a graphics card issue, but perhaps with these other issues, it indicates a bad board.

Any ideas or suggestions welcome.

If using a router, by pass it to see if you still see delays. And try a different Ethernet cable. They are damaged easily and many are cheaply made from the start.

You can also contact your ISP and they can test from their end. Do you have any other computers with this issue?

I am thinking of the following:
1. Driver issue, try updating your ethernet driver.
2. Your computer is having hard time connecting to your Router. check your cables and router configuration.
3. your internet is really slow, check your ISP.

hope this helps.