Many PPTP Connections seems to cause unbearable Connect to a Network delays

Following a reformat and clean install of Vista (suspected upgraded XP to be
the cause, obviously wasn't), I have apparently found the cause of this
unbearable problem which I know to be affecting a few people. I haven't
found a cure though!

Right-clicking the network tray icon and choosing Connect to a network is
causing a 22 - 24 second delay before anything actually happens. The
temptation is to click again and again but this just exacerbates the
problem.

I had a brainwave and thought I'd try removing my rasphone.pbk from the
%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Network\Connections\Pbk since this
is a file that I had kept and restored from before the reformat.

I was amazed when the Connect To box became instant.

I have just started adding in my PPTP connections manually one by one, and
the Connect To box is taking longer and longer to appear.

Here are some numbers:
25 PPTP VPN connections in the Network Connections folder: 22 - 24 seconds
for the Connect To box to appear.
13 PPTP VPN connections in the Network Connections folder: ~8 seconds for
the Connect To box to appear.
0 PPTP VPN connections in the Network Connections folder: 0 seconds for the
Connect To box to appear.

This is all on a Thinkpad T43p 2.13GHz Pentium-M, 2gb RAM, freshly
formatted. While waiting for the box to appear, processor usage hits ~100%
shared between explorer.exe, svchost.exe and lsass.exe.

I was somewhat confident that the problem was actually caused by the
Bluetooth stack, since following yesterday's reformat and restoration of the
rasphone.pbk file, the Connect To box seemed to only take about 4 seconds to
appear with all 25 PPTP connections in the Network Connections folder, until
I bluetooth paired my Nokia E51 with the laptop and created a "3G" dialup
connection. It's looking like the bluetooth stuff isn't at fault though.

Can anybody confirm the above problem? I know it's a lot to ask you to
create 25 fake PPTP connections, but I'd like to know if I'm barking up the
right tree or not.

 

Anybody?