Major problem with Oneiric 11.10 freezing

[Tom Bell]

Most of the time when I start a program, Thunderbird, Firefox, Dolphin, 
etc., it will delay anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes and even then there is 
no guarantee that it will actually start.  I have 3 screen captures that 
illustrate the problem and I will upload them to anyone who is interested.
Below is as much information as I could think to send.  If anyone wants 
more information, please be specific.
Thank you!

I have:
tommy at kubuntu:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 11.10
Release:        11.10
Codename:       oneiric

Linux kubuntu 3.0.0-15-generic #26-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jan 20 17:23:00 UTC 
2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

tommy at kubuntu:~$ lshw |grep -nA 10 cpu
WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
12:     *-cpu
13-          product: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6400+
14-          vendor: Hynix Semiconductor (Hyundai Electronics)
15-          physical id: 2
16:          bus info: cpu at 0
17-          width: 64 bits
18-          capabilities: fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae 
mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 
ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt rdtscp x86-64 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good nopl 
extd_apicid pni cx16 lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy

8G memory


tommy at kubuntu:~$ lshw |grep -nA 10 VGA
WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
115:             description: VGA compatible controller
116-             product: G92 [GeForce 9800 GT]
117-             vendor: nVidia Corporation
118-             physical id: 0
119-             bus info: pci at 0000:01:00.0
120-             version: a2
121-             width: 64 bits
122-             clock: 33MHz
123-             capabilities: vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
124-             configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
125-             resources: irq:16 memory:fa000000-faffffff 
memory:e0000000-efffffff memory:f8000000-f9ffffff ioport:ac00(size=128) 
memory:fbfe0000-fbffffff
WARNING: output may be incomplete or inaccurate, you should run this 
program as super-user.