My internet connection is so slow, i could fall asleep

[the big oops himself]

Hi all, this is a quite trivial question but one that for my own sanity i really do need answering...
i have an AMD Athlon pc and it is 2.4ghz, quite fast and reliable, however i use internet explorer 7 and i also use firefox occasionally so in order to keep my pc protected i have Zone alarm Pro firewall, I paid quite a lot of money for this as i heard it was one of the best, after a while i purchased Zone Alarm internet security all in one and again i found no problems with it (as such) but with all that said I am having problems with connection speed, when i turn on my pc it takes about 6 minuets to connect to the net, during this time the pc will not respond to anything except the task manager, so all i can do is sit and wait. when the pc is allready up and running and i have allready been on the net i can then connect faster....at this point it takes about 1-2 minuets, Is there any way that i can speed things up a bit? I have tried other firewalls and the built in firewall but it only makes for a small difference. Microsoft don't want to help me and said that i should concider a new pc with better capabilities, but i have only had this pc for 4 months and i dont think it is a bad one.
Any help on this problem would be greatly appreciated thanks 

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Have you tried uninstalling the Zone Alarm?

[Deerpark]

I would try uninstalling ZoneAlarm as well. My laptop have experienced similar issues with ZoneAlarm. The computer would freeze for a couple of minutes the first time I launched an internet browser after turning on (or restarting) the computer and this turned out to be because of ZoneAlarm. (More precisely it was the vsmon.exe process).

I'm now using the Comodo Firewall on all my computers. It performs better in security tests than ZA, it's actually easier to use (in my opinion at least), and best of all it's free.

[Broni]

It's little bit too late, but you made two mistakes:

I paid quite a lot of money for this

No reason, since there are freebies out there, even better, then ZA.

Microsoft don't want to help me

It's normal....waste of time.

Now...
What is your Windows version, and what kind of Internet connection you have?

I have tried other firewalls and the built in firewall

Was ZA disabled at that time?