Everything slower since reinstall

I may be an old mainframer but I'm a newbie to this forum. I've learned a lot from you guys. I've poked around in the archives and haven't found a recent entry addressing this problem It seems that after a clean reinstall the boot takes longer at each step, app launches ditto, connection of an external drive (including a Cruzer) takes ove a minute. This compared with original system put in service 6/09. This is after installing all updates through SP2, IE8, Silverlight, AVG 2011, Zonealarm, Firefox 3 (latest), Virtual Clonedrive and nothing else.

Vista X64 Home Premium, Dell XPS 435MT, Core I7, 6GB Ram, 600GB HD

Welcome
See if a clean boot can help you diagnose
How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/81176-speed-up-performance-vista.html

Hi
if you are experiencing a slow bootup then i'd suggest you to disable some of your startup items using tools like Ccleaner and AVG Pc Tuneup.

Thanks Richc46 and Manyenya. I know it's unreal to consider that an OS gets faster like a runner by exercising, but maybe I'm getting used to it. The launches seem faster and the external HD connection is taking much less than a minute. The clean boot didn't make a huge difference and in the meantime shut down my AVG so put msconfig back to default. AVG PCAnalyzer showed 40 "errors". One man's errors are another man's registry bloat. Easier to just reinstall every year or so.
I'm tracking another problem now which may not have anything to do with the reinstall since I hadn't tried it before. I got a 1 TB Hitachi/Simpletech/Prodrive with esata connection. Connected esata cable and nothing happened. Now I have to educate myself on that subject. Maybe I should start a new thread since I don't know whether it's a reinstall problem. All the drivers from the Dell driver disc are installed

You could stay here. Just post your problems.
In the mean time, no need to guess about the boot time
http://www.vistax64.com/general-discussion/282079-how-long-does-take-you-boot.html#post1283680
That last post that Imade has a tutorial that I think is just right for your needs.

Ignore my last post. Figured out Vista doesn't like hot plugging an esata device. Restarted while connected and it came up. I guess since I'll want to connect it to other systems, I should shut down and unplug to release it.