Its quite normal. Zonealarm taking 3-4 minutes at starting of the computer is a issue that has been discussed for a long time at the ZoneAlarm forums. This is due to Zonealarm Pro's Startup Scan facility, which scans the memory and important startup files with its own version of Kaspersky Antivirus. Even if you disable the AV, the startup scan cannot be prevented.
During the freezing period, if you look at the processes running, you can see "scanningprocess.exe" which takes around 60MB memory along with vsmon.exe which is the TrueVector Service.
Also, during the startup screen of windows, the Service tries to connect to Zonealarm website to maybe check for updates, but since you and me dont have always-on internet, it causes a delay.
This problem exists only in ZAP 6.5+, so one of the possible solutions is to uninstall ZAP 7, get ZAP 6.1, install, and upgrade it to ZAP7 via the new installer.
You can get old version from
http://download.zonelabs.com/bin/fre...seHistory.html
Also, if you use ZA Security Suite, its antivirus and antispyware may conflict with any other such products you may have installed and may extend the delay, so its best to use either of the two - either uninstall the other software, or disable ZASS's versions of the products.
This is a common problem with several zonealarm users, and so if you are new to ZAP you might find this a little inconvinient, but once you start using this, the positives outweigh the extra 1-2 minute startup time (in my case) and so its not a problem. I've been using ZAP since it was in version 5+, and I found the startup delay a problem in v6.5, but I dont find it cumbersome.