There are plenty of programs and services running in the background of your Windows machine that you may not even know about. Sure, you know the browser is running, you know that Windows itself has a few programs attached to it, and, yes, your instant messenger does, too. But what about that program that's always running to check and see if there's an update available? Or others that are just installed by third-party software developers?
Booting up the task manager should allow you to see all of the running processes. In Windows 7 and Vista, you can search for "task manager" using the search box built into the start menu. For all machines, you can just press Control-Alt-Delete once (which used to restart your computer) and it should bring up a menu where you can select "task manager". Go to the Processes tab and take a look at what's currently running. If you right click any of them, you're given some options, including the option to "End Process" which would close the programs out. But BE CAREFUL! Know what you're ending! You certainly don't want to delete something that you don't want to get rid of or are working on!
I used to give a link of a website to check all of those programs out, but nowadays, you can just take the entire process and use a search engine (Google, Bing, etc.) to check it out. Bring up your search page and type the entire process, even the file extension (e.g., .exe, .doc, .bat, .dll). It should bring up results that let you know what it does. Most sites also tell you whether or not it's critical or something that you can get rid of.
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