While you’re at it, download and run AdwCleaner: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=53253.0 Might be surprised at what it finds in your browsers. Point is, avast! is doing something other than the apparent slow loading you think, and since you found you had 100’s of Possibly Unwanted Programs on your system, AdwCleaner might find more. All those files were scanned at startup, remove them, and avast! does not have to perform that extensive task anymore. Should see more quickness if you run this.

How did these PUP’s get on your system?