[Jackson]

Often the best way to do this is by searching the name of the app or process in Google. This usually turns up all the sites that purport to describe that particular process and you can sift through them and pick the one that looks like it makes some sense. There are several sites, but they don't all contain every process so this is the best way to maximize your chance of finding it, in my experience. Just type in the name exactly as it appears in the left-hand column of your task manager window ("AsIpfMon.exe", or whatever) and you should pretty quickly be able to figure out what it often the site will advise whether you actually need that process running. If you decide you want to turn it off permanently (and only make that decision if you're really, really confident that it isn't a crucial Windows component or necessary for some program you use) then you can run MSConfig (by typing msconfig into the "Run" dialog on the Start menu) and you can disable it so it won't automatically load at startup.