Why do all my programs take forever to load and sometimes don't even load?

[Fred]

The two problems that may be the cause of your problems may be inadequate free space on your hard drive or most probably too many items in your startup group.
(Most programs in the startup group run constantly and increase the time necessary to boot your computer!)
Many programs install themselves in the start up group enabling them to load faster at the expense of constantly using computer memory and CPU resources. Examples are some HP printer drivers and Adobe Acrobat Reader.
CCleaner, Tools, Startup will tell you what is running and also give you the chance to right-click on the program name and select disable, which does not uninstall the program but prevents it from loading with the Start Up group. If you encounter a file that you are unfamiliar with, and you will, Google it to see what others say about it and if it is safe to disable.

Have you run MalwareBytes, or CCleaner recently?
Either of these will clean out a lot of crap on your computer and free up hard drive space.
Run Belarc Advisor to get a list of exactly what hardware and software is on your computer. Print it and save it since it records the product keys necessary to reinstall some of the software if this ever becomes necessary.

If IE or Firefox is very slow opening pages, go to Help and select “Start without add-ons” and see if this speeds things up. If it does, go to Tools, Manage Add-ons and disable add-ons until things speedup.