Illustrator CS3: Very Slow Open, Very Slow Save

Hello all,
I just recently have been issues with Illustrator CS3. Up until about a few weeks ago, it had been running flawlessly. Now, whenever I try to open up any EPS or AI, Illustrator will literally take at least a minute to open it. This happens with a complex 2mb AI files, but also for a tiny simple files consisting of a 1" square on a blank artboard. No matter the file size, it will take around a minute to open it up.
Opening a 44kb .eps: 75 seconds
Opening a 210kb .ai file: 67 seconds
Saving a 76kb .eps: 56 seconds
Export to grayscale PNG: 66 seconds
Export AI Layers to SWF Files: 2 seconds
This is ridiculous.
Saving is the same issue. It takes a ridiculously long time to save even a blank document.
It's not my machine (2x2.66ghz Intel Mac with 5gb ram, OSX 10.5.6). Photoshop feels a little sluggish too, but not to this extent. InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver, Acrobat all run perfectly. I even uninstalled all the CS3 products and reinstalled to find the same issues. And now that I've been given a time sensitive job, I need to get this program running quickly again.
I'm not sure what I can do to solve the problem, aside from trying to reinstall OSX and start fresh. Any and all help is appreciated! Thank you!

Well, I reinstalled Mac OS X before even trying those methods. It was less of a hassle than I thought it would be. Solved the problems with Illustrator. Everything is running fantastic.
But, I was just working in Photoshop, opening about ~20-30 small PNG's at a time to resize, grayscale, etc. I opened up about 60 at once to make things go quicker. They all opened up, with a little bit of lag. Now, if I even try to open up 10-15 PNG's at a time, they load very slow, like the problem I was having before with Illustrator...
Is there anyway to reset some memory settings? Or clear some cache? I believe this is what caused my issues with Illustrator before (opening too many files at once.)

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Here's a screen cap if you'd like to see for yourself.
http://img108.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=06951_proof_122_1123lo.jpg
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Jet,
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Sent from my iPhone

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