Programs (including ctrl+alt+delete) refuse to open in normal mode

Hello, I have been experiencing this issue for the last couple of days now and I was wondering whether you may be able to help. Essentially what happens is that in normal running of windows 7 I cannot open any programs after the initial bootup and login processes. The only programs that do open are a few of those that are opened on initial login, however if they do open up they run incredibly slowly, and general pc performance is terribly slow. (Takes about 2 or 3 minutes to access the desktop after attempting to login. Desktop image will appear after a delay and desktop icons will also appear after another delay). The programs don't do anything either, the pc will tell me it's thinking about doing something then will stop, giving me no messages. This all also applies to windows applications such as ctrl+alt+delete, task manager and attempting to log off or shut down the system. The system will also take around 5 minutes to boot up which is about twice as long as usual, however I'm not entirely sure on this one since I never monitored the original bootup time.

I'm not sure what caused this issue. It started yesterday evening whilst I was away from the pc, after I came back I couldn't open any new programs and I had to shut off the pc via the switch in order to turn it off (and I now have to do that every time I attempt to use normal mode). As to what the root cause of this is, I don't really know. My best guess is from using one or two slightly dodgy installers that comes with enforced programs that I don't want, which in hindsight I really should not used.

In case it helps, I am usually the only person to use this pc, however it did used to be used by someone else a few years back and is occasionally used by other users.

Also, before I found your help guides I ran a quick scan and a full scan using malwarebytes and found 20 and 6 errors respectively. The log included in this post was from one done afterwards whilst running through your guide, but if you need the logs from those two occasions tell me and I will provide them for you.

Thank you for your time, and I hope you can help sort me out of this mess.

 

Okay, I have done as you requested, everything seemed to go as it should. Here are the new logs as you requested.

 

Right, I have followed your instructions, but the main issue still remains. As with before, I cannot open any programs after login on the normal mode of windows. If there is any change from before, it seems as though general performance is faster. Booting and logging in does seem to take a much shorter amount of time, and as a result more startup programs seem to activate before everything just ceases to function. That being said, it's hard to see whether or not it's a fluke or not considering I can't open any programs.

 

Aha, thanks a lot, that fixed the main issue; programs open fine now.

However, my performance speed is terrible. Programs are running much slower than usual and about 65% of the physical memory is spent even with none of my programs open. Can you help me locate the issue?

 

Right, thanks for the help with the malware then