Ok, so i have a quad core, 4 gigs of 800 ram, graphics 9500gt, 1TB hd seagate,?

i would have figured that this would be fast, but in a basic it takes about 5 seconds to boot firefox.... once open everything runs fast, but the initial startup of all the programs takes a while... i have set it up to optimized with tuneup utilities before, and done it on my own as well, but everything is still slow it seems, aside from once its open... all i can think of is the hd is slow, being as once it is open(and on the ram) it runs fast... any suggestions or explanations? ohand power supply is more then enough bfg 1000 watt