very recently computer slowed down

I have a laptop that is less than a year old and it just recently begun to slow down on start-up. I have Windows 7 Home Premium, and a i5 processor. Just in the last few days it has been extremely slow on start-up. It would take a long time to respond to anything I clicked on. The only thing that I found that works is to hold the power button on the side of my computer (because I can not shut it down via the start menu). After I do that and restart it in normal mode there are no problems. Every time I turn my computer on I have to go through this. It is starting to get very annoying.