If I post the contents of my boyfriend’s computer’s task manager (Ctrl Alt Del) will someone be able to tell me what I should try to delete?
Here’s what I get on startup. Win98, HP Pavilion.
Backweb Agent
Explorer
Rnaapp
Frext
Iowatch
wkcalcrem
Reminder
Atiptaxx
rundll
systray
Vsstat
Vshwin22
Webscanx
Imgicon
Msgloop
Msg32
I’ve run spybot S&D and ad-aware.
I’m a Mac girl. 
Humble apologies if this should be elsewhere.
It’s a little bit tedious, but take a look at this site:
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm
You can look up items listed in the Task Manager alphabetically, and get a very good description of what it is and if you can (and should!) get rid of it.
I found a few things on my system that I was better off without.
Naturally, the one thing on your list - FREXT - wasn’t listed.
Just to add to RAWDuke 's post…
You’ll be wanting to go to start…then run…then type in msconfig
Click on the start up tab.
Uncheck unneccessary apps from here.
Which is where RAWDuke’s link come in handy. Sysinfo is another good one.
When you’re done unchecking…click apply, and then ok.
It will ask to reboot. Do so.
When it reboots…it will tell you it’s using selective start up.
Put a check mark in it…and click ok.
Thanks.
Were you able to figure out what to uncheck?
When you do a ctrl/alt/del what do you have listed now?
Minor nitpick - Win98 (or 98SE) won’t show that message - that didn’t come around until Win ME, so don’t freak when you don’t see it 
BTW, none of the items listed are spyware (Backweb and frext can be, but in this case since it’s an older HP, it probably came pre-installed by HP for tech support or for automatically updating the system).
However, just because there’s nothing in the visible processes when you hit CTRL-ALT-DEL does NOT mean your system is clean. Win9x does not show every process that is actually running on the system. A better solution is to get Spybot and Ad-Aware and let them scan.
critter42