processes eating up memory

Hello,

For the past few weeks, I've been noticing that when I turn my computer on in the morning, it's taking it *forever* to settle down for the day's work. As a result, I can't get going because all my programs are extremely slow and unresponsive.

Using System Explorer, I've identified 2 processes that are causing the problem. One of them is Windows Update! wuauclt.exe is running as a subprocess of svchost.exe, which is the 2nd process that's eating up the memory. There's a 3rd process (another subprocess of the same instance of svchost.exe) that I can't remember exactly what it's name is, but it's a Windows notification process. It doesn't take up much memory, but I figure there's a connection.

Together, these processes are taking over a half hour to do whatever they're doing so I can get my day started. This hasn't been a problem until recently. What's going on and how can I stop it?

P.S. I do my monthly updates on schedule. It's not that.

 

I hope this is the correct place to reply. I've got dds.scr scanning now - it's been running for 20 minutes, although it says shouldn't take more than 3. And my CPU is maxed at 100%.

I turned off my AV program & WinPatrol. Don't know what else might interfere with scripts running.

What do I do?

 

Thank you.