There are programs out there that just suck up CPU. Many of them can freeze your computer and cause it to crash. Process Lasso goes and takes control of these processes. It monitors processes and before they go and freeze your computer it lowers the priority of those processes so your other programs will still function. You can also set process rules such as forcing a certain process to run on a certain processor. Finally, its free, works on Vista and XP, and uses up a rather small footprint of 10 mb ram. Check it out: Process Lasso