MacBook Pro slower after upgrading to mountain lion?

Question

MacBook Pro 2009
Factory setting: Snow Leopard
Just 2 days ago, I reformatted my macbook back to its factory settings. Processing speed was fast and opening of apps does not seem to lag. Booting up and shutting down only took seconds. After reformatting my macbook, I upgraded my iOS from snow leopard to mountain lion and that is where the problems arises.
1. Booting up and shutting takes much longer time? It used to be less than 10 seconds however, now it takes about 40-50 seconds.
2. Opening of apps seemed to be slower. Example: When I open my iTunes, the app will bounce a few times and takes a few seconds (longer than before) for the app to appear.
3. Whenever I try to select something when surfing net or doing some other programs, the mouse cursor will never fail to change to the "colourful ball" which I will have to wait for it to load.
Can anyone help here?

Answer 1

Reinstalling Lion/Mountain Lion Without Erasing the Drive
Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Continue button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.