Well, if you want to see what the hell is going on, check into ye olde Task Manager, then search Google for the processes you have running. If one is a spywarez or some sort of malware, a nice little program called
Ad-Aware will help you out, as well as
Spywareblaster, and can't forget
Spybot Search & Destroy. I would run all three of these programs after finding out what you've got going on in the background. If that fails, then I say, find someone with some space for your shit that you can't live without and format the beast. If you've been running that laptop for over a year and haven't formatted it, then it's damn well due for such.