Slow Program Launches and Delays on Samsung Win 11 Laptop

Hi there. Having gotten great help on a BSOD on a desktop machine here, I am now looking to solve a slowdown on my Samsung Win 11 Laptop. I have filled in the 'Second System Specs' for this laptop that has an i7 at 2.8GHz and 16 GB RAM and 1TB SSD.
When I use this system it will sometimes be so slow as to take 10-20 seconds to launch a local program and just seems to freeze. No BSODs that I have seen...
What else may I tell you to get a look at what's going on here.....machine has run great until last month or two....Defender is enabled and I have Norton 360 and Malware Bytes running for protection....it seemed to handle the protection fine. Open to guidance.
Thanks for looking!
Phil

Run Malwarebytes. You get the real-time Pro version free for 14days at which time (if you do not buy it)it reverts to the free on demand version. Run a scan and quarantine everything it finds.

Make sure you have no corrupt system files that is causing this problem using sfc/dism.

Perform a clean boot to eliminate software conflict causing the issue. If it doesn't happen in a clean boot, you have some software conflicting with Windows. Brink's procedure will help you weed out which one. Perform a Clean Boot in Windows 11 to Troubleshoot Software Conflicts Tutorial

Monitor taskmanager during the slowdowns. Are your cpu and memory resources running at 100%. You can click on the column header to sort the processes to show heaviest user at the top.

I'll point the finger at Norton and Defender but you can easily see by rt click on taskbar, choose TaskManager, view processes and highlight the CPU column. It should be very obvious what is causing the problem. Post a screenshot here.