specWB,
There are lots of different guides free on the web that give suggestions about how to improve computer speediness by shutting down background services & editing the registry. If you read a few of them you'll quickly discover they don't agree with each other.
On a Windows XP Pro SP2 computer that's pretty heavily loaded with plenty of heavy duty software, I have a total of 20 background processes running. So your "61 processes running" does sound like a lot.
Here are a few samples of performance tweaking advice, but there're tons more:
Tweakhound
Registry Guide for Windows
Tweakguides Tweaking Companion Regular Edition
You can't just copy someone else's ways, because what you run or disable depends on your circumstances.
For example, in the area of "Services" hardly any on my main desktop computer are set to "automatic", they're mostly on "manual", and I disable the following ones outright (plus I put in a lot of tweaks in other areas besides services to help make it go F A S T !)
Application Layer Gateway
ASP.NET State Service
Clipbook
Computer browser
Error Reporting Service
IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service
Indexing Service
Infrared Monitor
Net Logon
Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
Network Location Awareness (NLA)
Performance Logs and Alerts
Portable Media Serial Number Service
QoS RSVP
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
Remote Registry
Routing and Remote Access
Smart Card
SQL Server Active Directory Helper
SQL Server Browser
SSDP Discovery Service
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Telnet
Terminal Services
Themes
Uninterruptible Power Supply
Universal Plug and Play Device Host
Volume Shadow Copy
WebClient
Wireless Zero Configuration
WMI Performance Adapter
For the examples you gave, you could shut off the MDM (Microsoft machine debug manager), the cftmon.exe (Microsoft Office thing in case you want to do input by voice recognition, not today thank you, I don't know about that ccProxy thing you've got, why run that?, you don't really need the ati2 stuff (2 entries), etc. You can Google the ones you don't understand & see what they are. There are plenty of guides listing the mysterious designations like cftmon.exe * telling what they are.
Be CAREFUL
specWB! Remember that....
Careful!
edit: link fixed