I have tremendous trouble freeing up some xp memory - I have 57 processes running in the background - but I have no idea where to start minimizing!!! Im scared im gonna start a system crash. My university has this network program called novell which does take quite a chunk from my RAM... but im sure i managed to pack it full of extra crap

I need a patient someone to help me with this pleaze- my memory usage is lying at almost 90%

I did defrag my registry, defragmented my hardrive and no i don't have a virus running... its just stuff that i don't knwo what to do with... HEEELP

It may not be a virus, but it could be some other form of malware, maybe spyware. I recommend you do a thorough malware scan. Check out Cleaning Out Malware. Look in Task Manager (Ctrl Alt-Del) and tell us what program (Image Name) is consuming your resources.

How much RAM do you have installed?

What version of Windows?