Help freeing up process memory

Okay, so I'm running a pretty decent computer. Radeon x700 (I know, bad card, bad company, etc.), AMD Athlon 64, 1GB ram, and big fat dual HDDs that doesn't really add into this question.

Why is it that, on top of all these very capable specs, I just finished a very choppy, very laggy game of BF2. I figured it was the server until I checked my ping, a nice solid 30 +/- about 5 here and there. I wondered why it was so jumbled, and lo and behold, this is my system's standard idling load. I wouldn't think a computer would use 35%+ of it's CPU in an *idle* state, however. :\

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v325/bigopinion/taskmgr.gif

Red highlights are programs I know I should close before I start anything intensive like video editing and/or gaming, yellow highlights are what I have questions on.
1) Why am I running *7* svchost.exe's? (Missed one highlighting.) Can I close any of them; they're pretty bulky!
2) services.exe and winlogon.exe - what's the former, and why is the latter running so heavily?
There are a few other questions, but this is all I'll cover here.

lol close explorer.exe i dare you XD

Killing explorer.exe doesn't do that much, >>2. ctrl-alt-del->task manager->file->run program.

*sigh* but he wouldnt have KNOWN that.and it can freeze your comp at times too XD

>>1

You're missing a few of the interesting columns in your tasklist.  I don't know if they all exist in home edition (I have pro), but I generally set my own taskman to include CPU time and VM Size as well.  And if you're interested in more realistic numbers, check out procexp.exe from sysinternals.  Taskman on steroids.

svchost processes are container processes and services run within them.  Any given instance of svchost may contain (or "host") one service, three services, or a dozen.  This is done to alleviate desktop heap issues (don't ask) and keep your process list a little cleaner.  If you want to view what's in those service hosts, fire up cmd and "tasklist /svc".  Note that that command may only exist in WinXP Pro.  Or maybe it's in the powertoys?  Anyhow, you'll be able to associate those hosted processes, generally, with services in your services list in mmc.

services.exe is another service container, so far as I know.  I don't know what makes it different from svchost.exe.

Think of winlogon.exe as your current user session's "uber-process".  Don't kill it, for your own good.

Uninstall real player and all of its mess, then grab Real Alternative.  That'll get rid of realsched and eliminate a nasty piece of pseudo-spyware.

Overall, a commit-charge of 270 isn't too bad.  If you really trim things down, you can probably get closer to 180-200.  And I hope you have at least 512MB of RAM as it's an XP box.

I admit I don't use my own PC for gaming much anymore, my own commit charge is typically 330-350.