I've been running into some problems with my computer lately and hoped GB could pick up where google failed me.

I'm still using the 2006 Dell XPS laptop I brought to college with me.  She cooks like an oven and weighs about the same, but up until recently that's been fine because I get to play the games I want at a good clip and sharp resolution.  Lately though, I'm getting weird intermitent slow-downs in older games like TF2 and Rome: Total War that make no sense to me (online and single-player).  I don't expect this machine to beast on Crysis, but it shouldn't be losing its hardware capabilities.

Has to be software, right?  If anyone knows a good program for culling background apps I sure would appreciate it.

Just need this thing to keep playing games for a few more months until the warranty runs out.  Thanks.

I'd recomend you just run MSconfig (Go start, run and type msconfig), click the startup tab, and disable any unneeded things, then they won't run on startup. Anything you are unsure of what it does, just google it, and it'll find one of many sites that will tell you what these processes do. It will take a little bit of time, but not too much.

Also, make sure you run Disk Defrag and Registry Cleanup, they should help speed up your laptop too.

"I'd recomend you just run MSconfig (Go start, run and type msconfig), click the startup tab, and disable any unneeded things, then they won't run on startup. Anything you are unsure of what it does, just google it, and it'll find one of many sites that will tell you what these processes do. It will take a little bit of time, but not too much.Also, make sure you run Disk Defrag and Registry Cleanup, they should help speed up your laptop too."

I would just reformat the whole thing.  Back up your important files, clean out everything and start over.

Bring up the task manager, see every process in the list? google their name and see what information is returned about them.

Some processes are needed, others are not, but their names all tend to be vague on whether they are or not. Some non vital ones will come under the 'SYSTEM' username but aren't really essential.

A long and boring process to google all these background processes, but it can help you in the long run.

Just sort them in task manager by their memory or cpu consumption and start closing them down, if it truly is "vital" you propably won't be able to shut it down. This way you can quickly test whether the background processer are the actual problem or not, if not just restart and they'll be back on.

Also delete stuff you don't need, clean registry, run virus/malware scanners, defrag, update drivers, check bios settings(fsb) and so on.

Something like NetLimiter2 is good for checking and limiting the internet usage of different programs and processes.