Windows Slowing Painfully

I am running WinXP on a 2 year old Toshiba laptop, and, as of about 2 weeks ago, when I launch a program, ANY program, it may start right up or it may take as long as 30 minutes to start. I have noted that Internet Explorer, Music Match, and most any game I attempt to run take an especially long time to load, while Opera, most any video file, and a few other programs start right up, although, Opera is prone to hang for extended periods.
I have tried running Ad-Aware, Spy-Bot, Zone Alarm Pro and the system restore feature within Windows itself. I am just about at my wits' end with this problem, so any help anyone might be able to offer will be greatly appreciated.

 

Sounds like you need to defrag the disks. Also check for not needed services and eliminate them.

 

Thanks for the reply, Mr Swarz. I was using DisKeeper Pro, but no matter how many times I tried to set the thing to a 'custom' schedule, it just continued to run whenever it took a notion... so I killed it! Uninstalled it, really. Your tip does make sense, however, because I don't think I've let the system defrag run at all since I removed DK. I'll try it & report back.

 

I went through the defrag, but I can't tell any difference in the performance from before. When I started the defrag the analyzer said it was only 6% fragmented, anyway.