OK, basically I first met this problem with Unreal Tournament (1st one). It didnt happen at first for like the first year or so, but some time after that, I noticed that after double clicking the exe file of UT, it took like 5 minutes or so to load up the game when it only took 10 seconds in the past.
I don't play UT anymore. Nowdays I play Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne. Been playing this also for a while now, AND recently I've noticed the same effect. The executable takes dog years to load up now and it's kind of frustrating waiting this 5-10 minutes for it to load.
Take in mind that my computer has never taken so long before and my hard disk mainly stays below half usage of it's full capacity. Also, the executable is the only thing loaded after a full reboot.
I have checked for startup programs etc and viruses and found nothing that changes it when removed (i.e viruses).
Any help is much appreciated