The WIndows XP firewall could well be causing it...when I used it, it made my connection to IRC slower. It wasn't as long as 59s, but it was about 10-15s on a server which would normally take me about 1-2 secs to connect to.
You might like to close other programs you have running too, if any. And I hope you didn't have "several" firewalls all enabled on your computer at the same time - it could cause them to clash, therefore, damaging the firewalls and making them almost useless, or worse, damaging your computer
I'd uninstall all firewalls you have, and just leave the XP one on, or if you want one from some congolomerate company such as McAfee or Norton, install ONE of them and disable the XP one. When I used Norton it did not affect my connection to mIRC (just <bleep>ed everything else up!) However, don't be another misguided user and think that firewalls
stop people from packeting you :P - Many many people seem to think that, mainly because people just say "get a firewall" when someone asks "how do I stop people packeting me?" heh. It will only log the IP's of the attacker, which you can then send off to their ISP. Their ISP may or may not take action, although they should, as it's illegal. By the way, as far as I have seen, Windows XP firewall does not log the IP's of any attacker, unless they make themselves ridiculously obvious.
Anyhoo, that's enough rambling about something which is unrelated
Good luck!
Regards,
