Have you perused your task manager to see if something's eating up your memory? If something is using an outstanding amount of memory you could have an optimization problem or a virus.
You can also run the msconfig utility and disable select startup programs and services, and that will generally speed things up - just be sure you know exactly what you're turning off.
If your case is particularly dusty, cleaning it out with compressed air can improve performance as well.
The last bastion I can immediately think of is a bad RAM stick. After trying the previous things, run the Windows Memtest utility and see if it spits an error at you. If you've got a bad RAM stick, you'll have to find it and remove/replace it.
For around a month now, programs/ games on my laptop have been running slowly or not at all. If I double click to launch google chrome, it takes like 5 minutes before it's fully open. Even when it's open it will say that the page is frozen and it asks me to close or leave it. It's pretty much the same with everything else. They take forever to open and most times just don't open at all. I'm extremely frustrated and want to know what is going on. Can someone help me?

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