FF3 Program Soooo Slow

I'm looking for any suggestions as to what may be causing the following problem and how I may rectify it, if that's possible.

Must confess I haven't been using FF much since the upd ate to 3.008 - or how ever many zeros it has - as, ever since I downloaded it and did a clean install the program itself has been running soooo slowly on my Windows 7 Quad-core laptop.

I click on the icon to start the program in stand-alone mode and wait...and wait..and wait. Then I start up Task Manager to check if the process is actually running - it is. So I wait some more. Eventually the white outline of the program's GUI displays and then I have to wait for a couple more minutes as it slowly starts to 'fill-in' each element of the GUI.

When that is finished, it is then a matter of luck as to whether or not it opens up to the last filter I was working with or some other filter I had accessed during the last session. NOTE - the filter render speed itself seems to be fine but that may be only because everything else is so slow.

When I click on another filter or category to sel ect it, the program - once again - has to think about things for a long time before anything starts happening and it then has to slowly refresh the Presets/Settings tabs once it has decided to do something. The same delay occurs when trying to access the Menu items and the wait time for the Filter Editor or Filter Browser to open is nearly as long as waiting for the program to initiate in the first place.

On occasion - for no apparently consistent reason - when I try to select another filter or menu item, or open the editor or browser the program crashes completely - no error report or anything.

I do have the preferences se t for multi-threading.
I make sure I have no other programs running.
I do have a registered copy of the Pro version.
I have the program installed on D: drive - which is internal.
I didn't have this issue with previous versions of FF3 on the same machine.
I have only been running FF as a stand alone while I have this issue.
While the program itself is glacial, it doesn't actually freeze the computer.

Any suggestions as to what the problem may be/ what I could do or try would be more than greatfully received as the bruise on my forehead fr om all the *headdesk* moments is really pronounced.

Thanks for the suggestion Sphinx - I had tried it without the virus scanner, unsuccessfully but had thought of firewall. Just tried that as well - no joy, I'm afraid.

Hey, Beekeeper, how many filters do you have in your library?
I have the whole library installed, so it takes a long time for FF to load (although I don't have the slow GUI drawing problem you mention).

Also, How much free memory do you have? Some times when windows is running low on memory, it's trying to write a page file but also at the same time do other stuff (Like loading FF). The result is a VERY slow EVERYTHING.
You can use the Windows 7 CPU meter gadget to see how much of the memory is available, and how bad is the CPU usage.

Im having a terrible time with FF3 as well. I just had a brand new computer built and theres no reason why it should be maxing out my system just looking at filters. But it does and I start getting warnings after looking at about 5 filters. Its like they are massive files trying to load. The resources its taking to load is boggling. I just bought this program last week and im sad that i cannot even use it and on a brand new computer no less. A custom built one thats less then 3 weeks old.