In response to priestlucas123, I only have 15 programs on my startup list, most of which are pretty light on resources, such as my gaming keyboard software, among others. The only process that might be a little heavy is iTunes, but that's about it.
As for doing a full clean and reinstall of the software, including rebooting to safe mode, that seems a bit excessive to me. I'll try the repair utility built into the Control Panel and let you know of the results.