To reproduce:
On Windows XP SP 2, Run IE7 + JDK6 u5 Java Plug-In, and navigate to a page with an applet (e.g. http://java.sun.com/applets/jdk/1.4/demo/applets/ArcTest/example1.html).  Attach to the process using windbg.exe (Windows Debugger) and in the command window run the command "!imgreloc".  This will list loaded DLLs, including which ones have been relocated from their base addresses, which can cause startup delays.  Excerpt follows:

...
0a670000 d3d8thk - RELOCATED from 6d990000
...
6d890000 jvm - at preferred address
6dc80000 jqs_plugin - at preferred address
...

d3d8thk.dll is relocated due to jvm.dll being in the way of its preferred base address.

If possible we should try to have jvm.dll avoid conflicting with an area of the address space that Windows DLLs are going to use.  In this particular case it's probably not a critical issue, since d3d8thk.dll is only 8k, and relocating it probably isn't that expensive.  However, in a process where d3d8thk is loaded first, jvm.dll would need to be relocated, and that would be more expensive given its large size.