preparing network connections

I have been given a new laptop from/for work. It was set up by IT guys. Mine is the only one out of 8 new Dell Inspiron 6400's with this problem.
When I do a full shutdown, next time I turn back on, it boots fine untill I get a blue screen with a message window stating "prepairnig network connections". It remains on this screene almost 2 minutes before breifly showing "running startup scripts" then finaly the log on screen shows up.
This occurs while connected to the network at work by ethernet or wireless or not connected at all. IT's brilliant solution was "just use Hibernate instead of shutdown" and while this does let me turn on very quickly, the problem is still there, and ocasionally there is still a need to reboot and have to go through it all again. I would realy like to find a fix for this and suprise them.
Any ideas? I have looked into this some, most feelings seem to point to DNS and or AD. Of course this was all set up by IT before they gave us the laptops. Thanks in advance for any help.

 

Unplug the network cable. Does the problem persist?

Thats going to be the quickest way to see if the problem is caused by network settings (which it probably is).

 

yes, this happens while connected or not. once I make it to logon everything is fine. set for dhcp.

 

And if you disable the network card?

Same problem?

 

Sory, I dont get on very often. True. Same thing.

 

Same problem. Now I should be able to respond quicker as I have now been given a blackberry and have internet and e-mail all the time. Thanks again for any help.