programms startup slow on (almost) fresh win7 install

[ogre]

Hello everybody.
I recently reinstalled win7 after several years of successful usage.
Today, about two weeks after resintall, programms started to start slowly. Small programs that used to go up in less that a second now take 10-20 secs. Sometimes, closing and restarting it immediately comes up instantly, but after a minute or so things go back to worse.


Only thing that comes to mind is that I installed OpenVDB client for testing, but removed it and rebooted machine several times.

I'm running defragmentation for night, but I don't have high expectations here ...

Any tips how can I debug this ?

thanks,
-michal

PS. what would you recommend for HDD helth check (free)?

 

[ogre]

P.S. I just noticed that going to 'Start Menu' and typing smth. stalls. I can see "Searching" info but no programs are listed