Windows 7: Not Crashed, but SlowMo Train Wreck: How to stop Processes before logo

Gang I'm needing to fix a Dell Inspiron Laptop with legit Windows 7 64 Home Premium that acts like it is running at 10% clock speed... It literally takes like 10 minutes just to get Task Manager up so its effectively impossible to debug in 'normal' mode. I thought I would use Autoruns to shut down everything I can find, but just getting it up and accessing the USB jump drive is almost intractable

when I had it up and finally did get Task Mgr running, it wasn't really showing much, performance wise. CPU almost idling, memory inconsequential, and I didn't see anything in the task list that just shouted MALWARE, it just takes an eternity to complete anything, as though CPU were Pegged and mem all gone.

at any rate, the question I have is: with just one user account alive on the system how do I severely limit what gets loaded without going to Safe Mode: I need normal windows operation to do things like uninstall programs & such.