Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit Suddenly extremely slow, wont shut down

I came home to and found my mother upset because her Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit laptop had suddenly become extremely slow. She had tried shutting it down, but it isn't shutting down right. THe task bar and icons disappear, but the background stays and it just stays there, like it was in a coma. So I had t restart it with the start button. It booted up in a reasonable time, and I was able to bring up task manager, but then everything slowed way way down. Chrome was basically frozen, as was every other program. I can only run the thing in safe mode.
I'm kind of tech savvy, ran a system restore and chkdsk/r. She ran antivirus programs. Nothing helped. I checked to see if she had any recent downloads. She said she hadn't and she doesnt visit many 'dangerous' websites. I'm kind of out of options, so I turn to you.

Sometimes a simple clean up can do wonders!
If you don't have them allready, I recommend you to use Defraggler to defrag your system.
And CCleaner to do a system sweep, and a registry fix.

Good luck!
Nommy

Ok, I am running scans now. I'll update my post as soon as that's done.

In addiition work through these other Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7