from a cold boot on some days it will take 9 attempts clicking on i /explorer before i finally get thru online (i am on b/band) - i get no error messages and no "page cannot be displayed" messages even and numerous i/exp show in task manager processes only and not in the applications tab, i simply cannot understand why it needs 9 attempts of clicking and a reboot to get online
If you have a software firewall it may be set to block all traffic during the startup process, in which case you would need to be sure that all your startup processes had completed and the firewall had "opened for business" before attempting to use IE (or any other internet application.
I had a similar problem with my connection and discovered, by accident, that making sure the modem is up and running before turning the pc on works every time. I turn the modem on, leave it a couple of minutes to fire up and then turn the pc on.
This may have nothing to do with your problem but do you have enough RAM(virtual memory)otherwise things can be really slow. 384 or even 512mb is probably the minimum nowadays for faster running. Just a thought.