Slow startup/shutdown, no auto refresh, update hangs

Hi,

I just installed a retail copy of win 7 on my laptop and have been experiencing some issues. At first everything worked fine but out of the blue my desktop/folders have not been auto-refreshing. Whenever I try to delete or create a new folder I have to manually refresh to the folder in order to view it.

When shutting down my laptop it takes 5+ minutes and when my desktop is loading after booting up the laptop it takes several minutes for everything to load and for the win 7 chime.

Finally, it won't allow me to update. When I try to use the windows updater it hangs for a while on "creating restoring point" (which may be normal) but then permanently hangs on installing update 1/16 at 0%. If I try canceling the update nothing happens and even when I try to shut down the laptop it attempts to install the updates but hangs on update 1/16.

From researching these issues I've realized that the auto-refresh problem is not uncommon and has something to do with a network. This may be unrelated but these problems only started to occur when I was transferring pictures via a USB stick.

Anyways thanks for reading, is there anything I can do that would help?