Michael brings up a good point. On my WinXP Laptop, where I have a wireless 802.11G card, it doesn't pump the card until after the login. It doesn't attempt to mount network drives until after you login. A good portion of the startup is unique per user, it doesn't happen until after login.
Completely wrong. Networking in XP is loaded at boot time, however you have to wait until the boot is completed i.e. disk-access has finished. The proof is that you without any problems can access shared resources, remote desktop etc directly after a boot, and without any users login in.
You need to read what I wrote and not what you think I wrote.
On MY LAPTOP, I can watch it pump the wireless card AFTER login. I watch it use DHCP to get its address. That card is not live until after boot. On my linux box, it DHCP's before the login. If your wired and sharing resources, sure, that happens before the login prompt. But I never said that. I also said it doesn't attempt to mount network drives until after login. It can't. Windows networking requires knowing who you are because you have to login into the remote host. It can't do that until it knows who you are. Windows can make its shared resources avaialble before login because it doesn't matter who is going to logon but it will not attempt to map your network drives until you login.
Completly wrong?
Rob
