You're noticing some of the inherent side effects of an aging operating system. As more and more software gets installed, removed, and installed, the operating system just doesn't perform as slick as it did when new. Part of the complexity is that certain kinds of software will affect how services process. It may delay launching them or slow them down.

So, it just happens that your weather widget is able to get ready before your system has established an Internet connection. There isn't too much you can do about it, but I have some ideas. First, see if you can get another weather widget of some kind that is intelligent enough to poll the internet connection and not complain about it while waiting. But perhaps more importantly, it may be time to review your system start up and services and see about optimizing performance.

At this point in time you may be loading a lot of unnecessary services and programs ("bloatware") that are slowing you down.

There are two ways that you can do the start-up review. The safest way is to run "services.msc" and change the start-up properties of your starting programs by changing their Startup type:

1. Set to "Disabled" any programs that you no longer use.
2. Set to "Automatic (Delayed Start)" for those you don't need running right away
3. Set to "Manual" for those programs that you don't need running until called for

This is just one of several things you can do, which are covered in great detail in the Tutorials section. See Speeding up Windows Vista.