[Thermodyne]

Um...Taskmanager looks fine, but may not show everything that is running.

What OS is it running? How fragmented is the drive?
Assuming that the system is free of infections, malware, and rootkits, it could be a hard drive starting to fail. I would run a detailed test of the drive, they take a while, but will find problems that tests like scandisk miss.

Also, make sure that the AV can update itself. Sasser and some others have the ability to masquerade as normal services and can prevent AV update sites from being reachable.

And, by any chance, does it have Norton ver 10.anything running?