Windows – How to prevent Service Control Manager hanging at start of Windows 7

I had a third NAS added to my home system this summer. At that time, I started to develop and issue wherein the start of my Win 7SP1 becomes a two-step process. MOST stuff seems to load immediately from my SSD. Then, about 16 minutes later, a couple of other programs plus the sidebar loads. It's a very consistent 16 minutes. I also don't have access to many system level processes until the later group of programs loads. For example, I can't uninstall programs via Windows Uninstaller or Revo Uninstaller. If I click on them, nothing SEEMS to happen. But when that 16 minutes expires, my screens become a riot of exploding opening windows … if I've gotten click-happy. I 'repaired' this a while ago by running Tweaking.com's Windows Repair AIO. But, it seems to come back after just every Patch Tuesday. And after this most recent one, the Tweaking.com solution didn't resolve the issue. I'm prone to only rebooting about once every three weeks, so this isn't a life-and-death issue. But it is an itch I'd like to scratch.

From the Windows Event Viewer logs, I know DCOM fails early in the boot process. Says DCOM can't be found.I don't know specifically what files to look for manually. But I do see DCOM entries in the Window\PolicyDefinitions folder and a dcomcnfg file in Windows\System32 and in Windows\SysWOW64. Duplicates seem to appear in the winsxs sub-system. I don't see anything bizarre about the execute line: C:\Windows\system32\svchost.exe -k DcomLaunch. And by the time I CAN look at services, it says DCOM's started and is automatic. The dependencies are through Remote Procedure Call. The only non-Windows services I can detect (not that I REALLY know what I'm doing) are Avast! AntiVirus, Google Update Service (gupdate) and Google Update Service (gupdatem). If I had to pick candidates, the Google Update Service would be high on the list.

After DCOM's initial failure, I get a warning about custom dynamic link libraries and then Service Control Manager logs that it is taking more than 4 minutes to start. Some 11 minutes later, it logs being hung … then everything loads and everything works!! There is nothing in the log I can see where SCM then succeeds. Ideas?

Date: 11/14/2011 4:17:08 AM
Event Type: Error
Username: 
Computer Name: Quincy
Source: DCOM
Event ID: 3221235482
Category: (0) -  Category Number: 0
Message: The description for Event ID '-1073731814' in Source 'DCOM' cannot be found.  The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display the message, or you may not have permission to access them.  The following information is part of the event:'{E10F6C3A-F1AE-4ADC-AA9D-2FE65525666E}'

Date: 11/14/2011 4:18:02 AM
Event Type: Warning
Username: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
Computer Name: Quincy
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Wininit
Event ID: 11
Category: (0) -  Category Number: 0
Message: Custom dynamic link libraries are being loaded for every application. The system administrator should review the list of libraries to ensure they are related to trusted applications.

Date: 11/14/2011 4:22:19 AM
Event Type: Warning
Username: 
Computer Name: Quincy
Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 2147490692
Category: (0) -  Category Number: 0
Message: The following service is taking more than 4 minutes to start and may have stopped responding: Server
Contact your system administrator or service vendor for approximate startup times for this service. 
If you think this service might be slowing system response or logon time, talk to your system administrator about whether the service should be disabled until the problem is identified. You may have to restart the computer in safe mode before you can disable the service. 

Date: 11/14/2011 4:33:19 AM
Event Type: Error
Username: 
Computer Name: Quincy
Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 3221232494
Category: (0) -  Category Number: 0
Message: The Server service hung on starting.