Fresh install of W7 excruciatingly slow; no viruses/spyware found

I have a Vaio laptop with a Core2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, and W7 HP x64. I bought it used so I did a fresh install of Windows 7. It was going great. Then I did Windows Update and SP1 failed to install. The computer started taking 15-20 minutes to load the desktop after entering my password after startup. I tried re-installing SP1 once again and it failed.

Finally, SP1 installed on the third try (despite me not changing anything). After installing SP1, it loads the desktop normally after my password, but the computer takes 20 minutes to actually be useable. The blue circular just goes around and around. It takes 2-3 mins to open the task manager, which shows no odd processes running. Finally, after 20-30 mins, the computer becomes perfectly normal and I can multi-task with Chrome, Office, and Acrobat with no issues at all.

I have done virus scanning, spyware scanning, defragged, and disabled all startup processes to no avail-- although it doesn't do this in safe mode. I have all the latest hardware drivers and all Windows updates. I am at a loss for what to do. I'm worried that if I do another fresh install the problem may just reappear after SP1. I'm not 100% sure that SP1 is the problem, but it started right after SP1 failed and a similar issue remained after a successful install of SP1.

I've never seen a computer act like this despite a presumed absence of malware and all the latest updates and drivers. Any ideas?

 

Have you done a chkdsk? If not I would do that just to rule out it is having trouble reading a particular file.

Computer>rightclick the C: drive and select Properties>Check Now button>Tick both boxes and hit Start. It will schedule for next boot so reboot, let it run and then see if any change on Windows loading time.

 

Have you performed a "Repair" using your W7 discs?

Sometimes that can sort things out.

 

I tried a repair with the W7 disc and it said it didn't find any problems. Trying chkdsk now.

Thanks for the help

 

Hi my friend from Greece :-D you can give us the model of your laptop , follow this

http://esupport.sony.com/US/p/support-info.pl?info_id=264#notebook

like sach2 told you the disk is the problem i think even creating this cd ( from clean machine )

http://forum.avira.com/wbb/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=82163

you are able to ensure that your machine is clean or not :wave