Good thinking. I would ALSO be inclined to do a full virus/malware scan of
your computer. Its easy to have many malware's (each of which will be seen as
a separate "task" by windows) running in the background, requiring lots of
un-necessary cpu horsepower.
Unless you have a very under-powered computer for programming 3DGS.
What are your PC's specs... CPU, RAM, VideoCard, and free HardDrive space.