New build with asus mobo, intel core i3, windows 7, EXTREMELY SLOW!

Hi guys, new here in search of help.

I used to be into computers, overclocking, benchmarking and all that a few years back. Then with work, marriage, and now law school, I've been off the bandwagon for a long time. Until three days ago I was running XP SP3 with 3GB of SDR ram...

anyways, decided to upgrade and combine what few parts were decent from my pc and my wife's pc (mobo and cpu got fried with a power outage).

we got the following NEW:

ASUS P7H55-M LE motherboard
Intel Core i3 540 processor
Corsair XMS3 4GB ram (1 stick with double heatsinks, dont have the model # with me)
Ultra Pro 650W PSU
Gigabyte case (eh)

used parts from the other computers
Maxtor 500GB SATA HDD
Maxtor 200GB SATA HDD
WD 250GB SATA HDD x 2
HP IDE DVD+-RW multi-drive
Philips PCI TV-Tuner card

the video card I had on my xp machine was a pci-e ati 7300GS (exactly...) and the tech at the store where I bought the mobo told me the integrated video would be better so to not even bother. I have a DVI connection to my monitor and a VGA connection to my LCD tv. both work and look ok, so I believe the video drivers at least are installed ok.

when I first hooked it up all it worked but began overheating in BIOS (got up to 62 C quickly). added thermaltake thermal paste and now stable at 45C (need better case ventilation I guess).

Installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit OEM from a DVD. this took forever. longer than Windows XP ever took me anyways. i did a custom install, where I had the installation cd delete all old partitions, create one partition and format it prior to installation.

from the first boot, it took forever to load and it lagged horribly, so that you can see the images drawing if you dragged something across the screen.

I thought it would be drivers missing. installed all the drivers that came with the ASUS CD. still nothing. then did windows update. 60+ updates. took forever. still sluggish.

there are no programs installed yet. windows update says everything's up to date. all asus drivers are installed. computer CRAWLS.

I know the parts we bought aren't exactly top of the line, but all of the parts are incredibly much more advanced than what I was using and this is running slower than my 750Mhz AMD Duron did with Windows ME back in the day.

i thought perhaps I needed to install the SATA drivers? i downloaded the drivers from the ASUS support page for my specific model motherboard...and i got "this computer does not meet the minimum requirements"?!!!?!

I tried doing a system scan, using sfc /scannow and left it overnight. it was at 20% verification 6 hours later when I checked again.

at one point windows checked the hard drive for errors, nothing. then I tried startup repair, and it found no errors that it could fix? i did a memory check and also came up with no problems reported.

since I've been out of the game for so long I thought maybe some BIOS option i'm missing. so I reset all the BIOS options to default. no difference. before I installed windows I had even taken out the BIOS battery to reset the values.

at this point I have a new computer, with modest hardware but immensely more technologically advanced than what I had three days ago. and it crawls like i'm using the computer through a 28.8K remote desktop connection (not kidding).

what is going on? since I'm not sure what kind of problem I'm having I'll be posting in all the outlets (asus, intel, windows 7 forums, etc).

any help or pointers will be appreciated. much googling did not prove useful. i dont have viruses, i dont have a full startup load, i dont have a full prefetch folder...this is a problem from a fresh installation!

your help is greatly appreciated!