Windows 7: slow laptop

my laptop is less than a year old and in the past few weeks it has become really slow. i am not sure what the problem is but i would be grateful if someone could help me

Download and run a FULL scan with Malwarebytes and post the result. We'll go from there.

Windows slows down because it gets dirty over time and so because it install many soft and update. To resolve this problem you can defragment the hard drive, verify is you are not a malware or virus, used msconfig in ms dos command if you don't want that all software are launched in early.

the scan is still running and so far nothing is infected (out of 80,000+ objects/files), i will post the complete results when finished scanning

i already checked the hard drive and it said that is was 0% fragmented

Could you describe what "slow" is, specifically? Is it slow to boot, slow to run certain apps, etc?

it is slow on start up, some times i have to hold down the power button to shut the computer down then restart b/c it doesnt boot properly, or it will boot properly but will be very slow opening applications after booting up, or the screen will be blank with only a mouse for a few minutes

Does it ever work "properly" at all, or does it always exhibit some slowness? Also, is slow booting or shutting down the most common issue?

I'd recommend doing a Disk Cleanup and installing and running CCleaner (don't run the registry cleaner, and carefully look through its settings to make sure it doesn't mess anything up more). Also go into Run and type msconfig, go to startup tab, disable anything you know you don't need....my advice, if you don't know what it is, don't disable it .

Is your system fully updated? What antivirus are you using? How much RAM does your system have? I see you're using 64-bit OS, IMHO you should have more than 2GB to get the best performance.

What also might be a good article to look at is the Optimize Windows 7 guide.