Stopping background processes

[runLoganrun]

I'm trying to shut down some background processes to help speed things up. I've got a website where I can look everything up on, and I know how to change the startup settings. But is that how I want to do that? All the startup items aren't on the processes list, and vice versa. So do I "end process" from Task Mgr? That'll just revert on re-start, right.
thanks

 

[digital_exhaust]

Don't use taskmgr for this, you are correct, those processes will restart.
Read this, it should help.

 

[runLoganrun]

Don't use taskmgr for this, you are correct, those processes will restart.
Read this, it should help.

I read That, and got the impression that it's not very useful, or rarely that it helps, to turn off some processes. It made it seem less important. Is that true? I see quite a split on this issue. Regardless though, I've got my browser open, and task mgr, and I'm using 45% of my RAM, and have 36 processes running. I don't know about the latter but the former just ain't right.
thanks

 

[digital_exhaust]

Have you scanned for ad/spyware?

After that you may want to look through this as well, it's more of a step by step guide.