yeah, i think if you do a search on the norton security website you'll find that the kernel.exe or whatever is a virus/trojan/spyware thing. As always, virus scanners (w/ updated definitions) are your friend (i like norton, you can generally get the full version for about $10 off of pricewatch software section) as is AdAware. The system process is the kernel process for the windows OS, explorer is the shell (i'm pretty sure about that, though i may be wrong).