What processes should be running in my task manager with no applications open? What is safe to remove?

Where is malicious software or folders commonly found and how do i remove these items?

I own a Toshiba Laptop if that helps. I got some things on here I would like to keep therefore I cant restore my harddrive. Thanks for your help guys.

FREE, is because I would like to try it first before buying one. The last one I tried, forgot name, wasn’t that great. It did more harm than good.

last time i ran regcure, it messed up my computer. I think bc it is ment for xp.

I restarted and kept hitting f10 which I thought was how you start the recovery partition. I followed all the steps and when I rebooted all the old files were here, plus a lot of junk that came with the computer when I first bought it. I wanted the computer to run like new but now it’s even slower than before I "reformatted" it.

How do I wipe my HP computer clean of all its files and start over?