delayed access to secure webserver

For some time I have this problem with a secure website. On a testmachine (Win2000) in our internal network the response on a https request was immediate, which is fine. On the live webserver, it took about 6 seconds before the client is given the option of accepting the vertificate (we are our own CA). Well, for the time being this is within acceptable borders, however I’m trying to find a way to make this response quicker. Now the real problem: on the testwebserver I installed a fresh Win2000 copy on a different partition which should in no way be able to influence the other installation. But… now it takes almost 2 minutes before the certificate screen pops up in the client, and another 1 ½ minutes for the test webserver to process the credentials. Seems like something is looking for something until some timout occurs. By now I have no solution for it. Tried the wfetch.exe utility from MS to troubleshoot the connection. What happens now is that, given correct credentials, the complete page is loaded within seconds in the utility. Maybe something wrong with the IE install, but nothing changed on my PC lately. I tried it with making the test webserver trusted, tried it without the trusted option... no difference. Well, tried another machine then: this works! A Win2000 server acting as client gets a response within 5 seconds, which is, as we concluded, within an acceptable range. I'm still working to get a fast response back on my own PC, as, well it could be any other outside client connecting to our secure server having this problem. And that certainly shouldn't happen, I've never encountered a client willing to wait for 3 1/2 minutes getting access to a website