What should be running in the back ground

[fin54]

Hi I am using window?s vista, can anyone tell me what should be running when you press ?ctrl, Alt, & Delete and get the task manager and click into processes, I have a very long list and don?t think it is helping the lap top to run smoothly.

It all depends what programs you have - several of the processes will probably be the anti virus & any anti spyware programs you use. I currently have 83 processes running, (using 53% of the physical memory, but the CPU is only running at around 5% with the occasional spike) but the only application listed is IE - this is on a laptop which is only about 10 days old, so I haven't installed much on it yet.
Apart from IE, the thing that's taking most of the memory is the Desktop Windows Manager.