Taking Forever To Search For Network On Bootup

I recently purchased an HP DV7-4285 Laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit installed on it. After spending this weekend "De-OEM'ing" the machine (uninstalling the crap I don't need and installing the software I do need along with optimizing everything), I've noticed 2 things that I wonder if there is anything that can be done to eliminate:

First, upon bootup, when the desktop shows up and the few icons show up in the System Tray (I'm old fashioned, I know it's the "Notification area" now!), I get the icon that indicates its searching for a network to connect to. Now I'm really old fashioned when it comes to network connections. I don't use Wi-Fi, and I don't have WiMAX either, nor do I have an air card from my cell phone provider. I only connect to the internet with a wired connection because I simply don't trust Wi-Fi and don't have a need for WiMAX. Every time this machine boots up, it takes upwards of a minute for it to stop "searching" for a network. I only plug this machine into the network to get online when I need to, I don't stay connected all the time. Is there any way of being able to stop Windows from trying to search for a network every time the machine boots up? My desktop machine which has Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit does this also but only for a few seconds.

Second: When I enter my password to log into this machine, it will then put up a screen that says "Please Wait", which is normal, then sometimes that screen will go blank for a couple seconds, then come back saing "Please Wait", then take me to the Windows Desktop. Everything otherwise loads as normal from that point. Any idea why this is happening??? As far as internet security software that is installed on this machine (I wasn't sure if this was the reason for this), I have McAfee VirusScan Plus, Ad Aware, Spy Bot, Privacy Mantra, and CCleaner installed. Any ideas on this minor "peeve" would be appreciated...