Why does takes a long time for a program to load from my desktop?

Almost impossible to tell without any further information.
Computer specs, OS, progam errors, etc would be a good place to start.

The more information you give us the better able to assist we are.

I am using a dell xps 200 and Win xp. I have several icons on my desktop such as Word, excel etc. whenever I click on the Icons to load the programs it takes a long time to load. This is a recent problem. Any suggestions will be apprecciated

Few more questions.
When was the last time you did some serious maintenance on this machine.
This includes full patching, anti-virus and malware scans, defrag, registry clean and checking your start up options.

Also what level of available resources do you have ?

The only thing I haven't done is defrag which I will now do.

There's other tips here: https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/computers-beginners/frequently-ask-questions-about-computers-233870.html