jiggle at your own peril
if you have a 100% CPU useage ... you have a problem ... forget the 50 processes (yes they will slow things ... but not as much as you are experiencing)
the lappy I'm using now has 35 processes running.
commit charge 405/2395 ... and a cpu useage of 2-11%
something is seriously wrong with your machine (or the virus scanner is running ...)
in task manager ... look at processes click on the top column CPU twice ... you've now sorted the processes by cpu useage - with the exception of system idle process ... can you see any running above 10%?
from what you say ... it's not a virus (not exclusively anyway)
download both
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/in dex.html
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/products/ad_aware_f ree.php
install and scan (twice)
also answer sparko - what virus scanner?