Or Start->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Event Viewer
56 processes is not great, but it’s not completely bonkers either. I would, however, kill off a load before playing a game.
Your problem maybe your graphics card in power saving mode – it’s wake-up mechanism may be foobarred. It’s something I’ve had in the past and fixed either with a driver reinstall/update, or just changing the power saving settings.
Or another pissibolity is a disk indexing service sucking up so much CPU in “background” mode that it doesn’t yield enough cycles for Windows to properly gain control again. Windows’ multi-tasking is notoriously shit – not very pre-emptive at all and relies upon programmers doing the right thing in tight busy loops.
(That last sentence does not help you at all – simply shows what a boring nerd I can be 🙂 )