no task manager + game slowdown

[Willamette_sucks]

recently some wierd things have been happening.
the first of which is that i cannot open the task manager.
if i press ctrl alt del, it will open briefly (1 second or less) and then close itself. it will still show the task manager icon in the lower right hand corner of the screen, but if i move my cursor over it, it dissappears.
the second thing that has been happening is that in games (sof2/ut2k3/most any demanding game) they will suddenly slow down for a second to a few seconds. like itll be 100fps, and then suddenly 20-30 for a couple/several seconds, then back up, like something is using up cpu resources... but what??? and i cant open the task manager to find out! i reinstalled windows, and it worked fine for like an hour, now its doing it again. theres nothing specific i can pinpoint that i did that would cause this, and it never did it before. ive tried a few different things, but cant seem to fix it.

ne1 know what this is or have any suggustions?
ty

The first LAN party I went to was at a PETA convention. They booted me when I shot a crab in HL!

 

[btvillarin]

Try using <A HREF="http://mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml" target="_new">Startup Control Panel</A> to see if there's a program running in the background that could be doing this.

Bryan
<A HREF="http://www.btvillarin.com" target="_new">btvillarin.com</A> (Computer help 'n' Stuff)

 

[Willamette_sucks]

i got that program, but unfortunately it didnt help.
also the program kinda sucks.

The first LAN party I went to was at a PETA convention. They booted me when I shot a crab in HL!