>I was just minding my business programming in VFP and machine started slowing down. Within an hour it gows to a craw.
>
>Naturally I start investigating. Stopping and/or uninstalling whatever seems suspicious. I notice that for some reason in Windows Task Manager the task manager itself is taking 25% of CPU time.
>
>Any idea why this might be?
>
>TIA,
>
>Alex

There are some general things you can look for:

Bloated temporary folder (not just temporary internet files but your OS temporary folder and subfolders)
Bloated registry
Spyware
too large a prefetch
Viruses
Too many apps running in the background
Disk fragmentation

There's help and directions for each on the web. A good rule of thumb is: what was the last update or download or web search you did just prior to the slowdowns starting? Sometimes a restore to previous date of the registry will resolve updates that causes problems but only do that as a last resort and ONLY after backing up everything (including the registry) and attempting to locate the problem and cleaning your system first (too many temporary files, too large a prefetch, spyware or viruses, etc).