very slow to start up, shut down, back up

Hello.
Can you please help with another problem with my Vayo laptop? I looked through other threads but have not found the answer. Here it is:
- it takes forever to start up. When I open task manager and check "processes" there seems to be dozens. The CPU usage is almost always 100%.
- it takes forever shutting down.
- I'm now backing up everything but it takes forever as well even though I've mostly Word documents and nothing heavy. As I'm doing this the CPU usage is in the red and something called "kernel time" is red as well.
- once it's on, the computer works well and is not particularly slow.
One thing - but I don't know if it's related: a couple of days ago it stopped recognizing my DVD player (WinDVD).

What I've tried: running an Eset antivirus in-depth analysis but it didn't detect anything (it's usually very quick to alert); defragmenting but the machine says it's not necessary.

Can you suggest anything for the speed and the DVD player?
Thanks, Geeks!

 

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=106650

 

Thank you very much for the help. I'm going to try all of this and keep you posted.

 

I've tried the first half and gained about 30%, which doesn't really mean much as it was so slow. I haven't done the registry bit because I'm a bit scared to do something stupid but shall probably consider it when I have more time.
I'll keep you posted. Have a good day.