May I suggest two things that have helped me figure out what my CPU and Memory is doing when apps are running:
If you can try what is called a "clean boot" to see for sure what services are bogging down your system
http://www.ehow.com/how_5331553_clean-boot-windows.htmlIt requires you to select and deselect start up programs and services so you can eventually identify the
culprit however even when you do that you will need to know what the app does before disabling completely.
There are probably a bunch of articles on clean boots and its uses including in microsoft forums.
The second is another useful tool that was given to me by a pc support forum that you might consider as well
unfortunately, my suggestions will require some time taken for you to decipher results unless you really really want to pay a techie to
do it for you.
What surprised me is my findings on the amount of mem some microsoft apps take up when a system starts up.......
like it is unlimited or something.....thanks microsoft........
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspxThese things may help confirm if it is the AVAST stuff or something you may not have seen before like 28 versions of svchost.exe running
up the cpu. I went to Avast recently because MSE and Windows Defender was doing a number on my CPU load. I find AVAST to be
leaner and slimmer than others so I am going to stick with it a while. At this point seems to be a useful program to me.
I do not have multiple spyware apps nor antivirus apps running either only AVAST at this time
Windows 7, 64 bit , Home Premium, SP1.
Toshiba Satellite A505
4GB Ram
i3 Core Processor