Hit your Start button (bottom left), & in the "Search programs & files" box, type:
msconfig
& press enter. Click the startup tab on that. What do you see?

You mentioned a maleware scan, I do hope you have a good anti virus as well? and yes check start up for items you do not use immediately by removing from start up does not mean you are getting rid of them, only from when the PC is booting up, you can check services running there as well, you may have things running in the background constantly not needed. And have you ever run disk clean up?

Something is making too many reads & writes to disk, using too many cpu cycles, or using too much memory - most likely one of the former two.

To sleuth that out, you can try using Task Manager, then look in the CPU, I/O Reads, and I/O Write columns. (If any of those columns are not there, you can add them in by going up to View>>Select Columns).

Then for each column in turn, click on the column's title head to prioritize that column, High to Low, or low to High, and see if you can see something that stands out as using a lot of, say, CPU cycles.
Often you will find something like an Antivirus scan going on, which will be a lot of I/O (reads & writes to disk.)

ps: You can get to Task Manager if you right click on an empty space on the Task Bar.

Download ccleaner, do a scan, maybe a disk defrag, ALSO I suggest not using IE..it sucks, nobody uses it anymore.

Just about IE market share, that's actually not true, thus, pretty tendentious.
You're likely to start a browser debate with that, which would not be relevant.
I don't use it, but the numbers don't support that conclusion - especially on the Desktop - and besides, it's most likely not the source of their problem.
See :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_tables

(A fragmented disk highly unlikely to be the problem in this case either, just for the record.)

Sorry for slow reply....had week end company. Beng, when I did MSCONFIG, it showed Nvidia, Microsoft Security Client, Microsoft Windows Operating System, Avast, RealConnect Agent, and Microsoft Office XP. I am not sure about the Microsoft Office XP; I don't think I even use it. RealConnect, I don't understand why it is there. I don't have it or use it....it's definition says Data Load; I disabled it.

I'm not Beng, but most of the time you can just google for whatever you find.

RealConnect looks to be some kind of updating app, installed on Toshiba machines - software provided to it by Conversant. It's not necessary to have it running, although I can't say I'm sure of precisely what it does.
Some links on that :

http://www.datalode.com/technology.html
http://www.shouldiremoveit.com/Toshiba-Registration-17154-program.aspx

A more worrisome conflict of software there would be having both "Microsoft Security Client" and Avast running, as "Microsoft Security Client" is part of Microsoft Security Essentials - Microsoft's Antivirus and Antimalware program. I'd use only one and uninstall the other.

Since "Microsoft Security Essentials has both an AV & Antimalware component, if you want to keep Avast, and it doesn't have the Antimalware component, you might want to install Malwarebytes.
Or - just use "Microsoft Security Essentials" and uninstall Avast.

In my experience, MSConfig doesn't really show all the startup apps & services - I usually use the free "Starter" program by Codestuff, because it shows a lot more information.
Codestuff Starter

Even that doesn't show absolutely everything, but it's a good place to start, and it's easy to use.

"Runscanner" shows more, but is more difficult to use.

Just for the record, I'd still give a try of my method in my post before, but I'll leave that up to you.

-Kent

I have malewarebytes too! That was the maleware scan that I said that I ran. I have had Avast for many years. Don't know if I have always had the Microsoft Security Client. Barb I will see if I can do what you are suggesting. I have been off my PC for the week end so currently, with what I am doing it is working fine.

As a male, I resent the term maleware and its connotations.

Try malware, y'all.

If you like Avast, just uninstall Microsoft Security Essentials. If it doesn't seem that easy, I saw a lot of uninstall directions for that. Having two antivirus programs running at once can cause problems when they both fight to scan the same file at the same time, put simply.
But . . . somehow I don't think that's going to be the cause of the pause, so to speak. But then again, it could be.

Ok, I will. I really don't seem to have any problems when I run my malewares scan. I get a lot of "Pup" stuff. One culprit seems to be an Iwin game that I really like to play. I just quarantine them and delete them.

Check out the firewalls. There should be only ONE firewall running. If two are running, they can conflict and slow the system. By default, Windows turns on its firewall when the operating system is installed. If you choose to run a different firewall for example, the one in Norton anti-virus, then turn off the Window's firewall. If you choose to use the Window's firewall, then turn off the one in the third party anti-virus application.