In an optical transmission system which utilizes polarization multiplexing, a receiver includes an adaptive equalizer which is adjusted at turn-up such that two polarization modes at the equalizer output are time aligned. The adaptive equalizer may be reset in a directed manner in response to an indication that one polarization mode is present at both the first and second outputs. Further, the dominant filters taps of the adaptive equalizer are maintained near a middle of a tap index range. The receiver may also include an interpolation function upstream of the adaptive equalizer and a symbol timing error estimation function that feeds a control signal back to the interpolation function, wherein the interpolation function causes the adaptive equalizer function and symbol timing error estimation function to receive an integer number of samples per symbol.