Screen blank for 30s after login

[Vidar]

I've had a little regression with boot up time on my laptop. Fresh installed mint booted up really briskly but after messing around with it I've managed to prolong the boot up time about 30 seconds.

I'm using Mint 7. I have played around with configurations quite a bit, but I can't think of any big changes other than enabling laptop mode.
The delay in boot up process happens probably after login and has something to do with gnome.
I have enabled automatic login. Boot goes smoothly to the point the mouse cursor appears on the otherwise black screen. Then nothing seems to happen for 30 seconds and then the gnome desktop is loaded with out a hitch. So everything works fine but I don't remember a delay like this after fresh installation. What have I messed up and can I fix it? I tried to disable laptop mode but the delay stays...

Enormous thanks for your help!

[MaddogF16]

Have you checked to see what services are due to start at startup, maybe something was added during your configuring of things that is taking a bit to load.