Odd delay before control panel, programs start in Windows 7

[Wombat Pete]

Hello,
Specifically:
There's a significant delay before the control panel displays as a menu when activated from the control panel.
It's as if the computer is waiting for a response from something, times out, and shows the menu.

Note: when I activate the control panel from a desktop shortcut, it opens IMMEDIATELY.
Programs seem to start with a similar delay; otherwise, the computer seems very fast.

Looking at the task manager as I try to open the control panel as a menu, I see only that explorer.exe shoots up to about 13% of memory usage, nothing else unusual.

I have a new IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad with i7-2720 & 8GB RAM & Windows 7 (fully updated).

A clean start does NOT solve this problem.

Could the issue be related to services started/disabled? I've played around with them, but it hasn't solved the issue.

I've run all the hardware diagnostics I can find - the memory, and everything else, passes with flying colors.