Task manager...how many processes?

how many processes do you have listed under task manager. I'm running on windows xp and my TM shows 66 processes!! does that sound a tad high? At the moment my cpu usage is at around 15-20%, however after a bit of browsing the interwebs it jumps to 100%...and my computer bogs down bad...to the point that I have to restart the computer, there's no other way to continue working. One process is using like 400,xxx k (firefox uses around 100,000 for comparison. This one that's over 400,000k is called svchost or something similar...anyway whenever I close it, I am no longer able to get online. Suggestions?