This is going to be a little difficult to explain. This is a problem that started recently, every thing was working fine up until two weeks ago. After starting Windows 7 and logging in (I log on with a non admin account) the tray icon which inform the status of networking has the small Windows "doing something" circle (I forgot how it's called...) on it but it doesn't rotate, it's stuck. Usually this will appear for a brief second while a network connection is being set up but lately it will stay in this state for about two minutes in which networking is not available. During this time I cannot run any action which requires administrative privileges, either directly through right clicking and "run as administrator" or for example opening the network and sharing center. Trying to do any of these actions results in the process or windows "hanging" until a certain point which is also when the little circle above the networking icon disappears, networking is available, and everything is running fine.
Event viewer doesn't list anything out of the ordinary. It feels as if some kind of action is taking place that blocks any other actions from being performed until the first one is completed, however I have no idea how to trace down what is the source of this problem.
There is no change if I log on with an Admin account, everything is the same as described above.
edit: I didn't investigate it fully but the problem turned out to be PostgreSQL. For some reason the postgress server would cause the network to hang as at startup.