actually yes. Once you've changed everything over to the classic view, go to start menu, click run, then type in msconfig. Click ok. Select the option for selective startup, then click the startup tab and deselect things you don't want booting with your computer, like any programs you don't use etc. If you are computer savvy, you can kind of tell what something is if you expand the little "Command" bar, because it will give you an idea where on your drive things are located.
Also, if you norton for example, get rid of that. In my opinion, norton and mcafee antiviruses make a system so slow. I recommend a free antivirus from here.
http://free.avg.com/
Although there is another one called Avast! which a lot of guys here use as well, either one is decent, and they are free, as well as fairly light on system resources. I run my avg antivirus and game on my system, and I've got an AMD dual core chip and 2 gb of ram. Granted I have a better video card, but regardless this system runs pretty well for the most part.
Also, if you need an office application, check out openoffice.org. It's open source and completely free, will allow you to open files in the newest microsoft formats, even lets you save in older microsoft formats, and you can download free templates for whatever you want to do with it, just do a little searching on their site and on google. Honestly, I have Microsoft Office XP sitting around my house somewhere, but don't even have it installed because I use this program instead. A little learning curve, but it's close enough to Microsoft Office that if you have used older versions of office, you should pick it up quickly.
Other than that, just keep the hard drive defragmented. I don't use the Windows program, there is another free program called Auslogics disk defrag, it's pretty good and once you defrag your drive once, if you do it regularly, it will usually finish on mine in 5-10 minutes.
Also, I don't know how much memory is installed on your laptop, but if it's less than 2 gb, I recommend checking what the specs are on it, and heading over to newegg.com, pick up 2 gb or more there, and install that. That should help as well.