Slow opening of apps

It takes forever for my desktop apps to open. Using firefox and even my favorites take awhile to open. This just started today. Any help appreciated.

There could be a misbehaving program which loads at startup and which runs in the background, slowing everything down. Here's how you can tell if that is the problem, as well as how to fix it:

Run MSCONFIG. Go to the Services tab. Put a check in the box which says "Hide all Microsoft services", and click Apply. Click the Disable All button, which will disable all of the services which are still showing in the list, that is, the non-Microsoft services. Click Apply, then OK. Close MSCONFIG, and restart the computer.

Log into Windows, and try different things, to see if things have improved. If Windows is now working at a normal, acceptable speed, then you know that one or more of the non-Microsoft services was the culprit.

You now have two choices: Leave all of the non-Microsoft services disabled; or enable them one at a time, to see which one slows things down. If you leave all non-Microsoft services disabled, you might not have the functionality of an important program, such as your anti-virus program. Therefore, I suggest you go back into MSCONFIG and re-enable one service at a time, rebooting after each re-enable, till you find the offending service. Make note of which service it is, then disable that one and leave it disabled. Continue re-enabling one service at a time then rebooting, to see if there are any more offending services.

Once you have found the offender, you could either just leave the service disabled, or you could figure out which program it goes with and uninstall that program.