Startup, slowdown, dock problems after dropbox

Hello,

I have a 2008 Macbook pro, came installed with leopard, but then I upgraded to snowleopard about two years ago. I noticed since then that the computer was a little slower

Anyway, I installed dropbox on my mac about 5 or 6 weeks ago, and at this time I believe my macbook really started slowing down. While streaming videos, the spinning wheel would appear more often. It didn't bother me that much, but then I didn't use it for a week. Turned it on a few days ago, and it wouldn't start up right, I got just the apple, or a white screen. It actually started booting up, just extremely slowly, like 20 minutes

Anytime i clicked or "right clicked" on anything related to the dock or finder (the trash icon, the time, the battery, the airport) the computer would freeze for 5 minutes. I could still move the cursor, but everything was frozen. I finally managed to delete everything related to dropbox, and it did help. However, it still takes at least 5 minutes to start up or shut down, and if I right click on anything on the dock like the trashcan, it feezes for a few minutes. In addition, my skype is having some serious problems now too and the video and audio are choppy

I already tried activity monitor and saw nothing suspicious. I ran disk utility and verified and fixed permissions. I deleted everything from dropbox. I booted up in safe mode as well, but wasn't sure anything else to do

I am currently traveling in Taiwan and I don't have my startup CD for snow leopard. There is also not an official mac store here i don't think, and I will be here in taiwan until my apple care service agreement runs out in June

Please let me know if anyone has any suggestions outside of reinstalling or booting up from the CD, thanks