Identify and zap rogue background processes

If you open up your Windows task manager and take a peek at the list of programs running in the background you might be surprised to see how much memory they're sucking up. Are they all absolutely necessary? Are they malevolent or benign? Often it's difficult to tell because Task Manager only displays their truncated file names. Rarely do malware authors label their wares, 'enormous memory-hogging computer destroying virus.exe', which if you ask me is rather cheeky of them.

One way to find out for sure what these processes are up to is to search for them in the Process Library database. The results will either put your mind at rest, or inform you of the level of threat the parasitic code poses if left to lurk on your system.

Anti-spyware tools should eliminate such gremlins, but since no single scanner is capable of detecting them all, I'd strongly advise you to run any remaining suspect processes through the above search engine to keep your system healthy.