Problem solved! I looked into the services, and there was an ASUS fan control service that was left hanging in a "starting" state. Must have been an install problem. Anyway, I set the startup property of all the ASUS services, and few other unneeded services, to "Manual". Now I can access web pages and system settings almost instantly after start screen appearing, and my whole boot sequence is under 10 seconds.
Wow
I'm glad I asked - I was going to accept the delay as normal behavior. This forum is great!
Thanks everyone!
