Once I import photos from my harddrive into LR, before I go into the Develop module, I wait for all the photos to "load", by waiting for the 3 tiny dots to disappear from each photo, indicating the photo is loaded. The problem is, only the photos that are displayed on the screen actually "load", so I then have to scroll down to have the next line(s) of photos to show on the screen before they actually load.
You don't have to do this. It sounds like you have LR set to build "minimal" previews on import. Then it has to work hard to load them later. Instead, set LR to build "1:1" or "standard" previews on import. This way the import process takes longer, but the previews are all built when it's done. This setting (called "Render Previews") is in the top right of the Import screen.
Also, I've heard it's good to give LR a big cache for Camera Raw Settings. This is done in LR Preferences, under File Handling.
A couple of things could also help in addition to Zlatko's tips:
1) Increasing RAM to 12-16GB (I have 24Gb but I never see it go beyond 12 GB usage)
2) Get a Samsung 830 series SSD. This really helps. 830 series is 6 Gbps
but the most effective tip I have seen work that helps with no spend, is for CPU's with Hyperthreading (all i-7's I think) , open the task manager, right click on the LR process and choose affinity. Unlick affinity to all odd number cpus (these are hyperthreaded) and leave 0,2,4,6 clicked on. This should help some. Non-hyperthreaded CPU's don't suffer that bad from performance that much for this reason.
Hope it helps.