Background program slowing things down

Hello Helmut,
We regret for the inconvenience caused. Since you have mentioned that you are expreincing issue with your background application, we would request you to check with your taskmanager whether your any of the application running at high CPU usage, in addition to that Could you please send the screenshot of your error messages so that we can assist further? Please click on the following link http://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?urlname=How-to-create-a-screenshot  to send the screen shot.
Thank you.

The green light on my laptop indicates that there is a background program running a lot of times, slowing things down considerably.

Is there a way to find out what is running and possibly to get rid of it?

Helmut, For your info, just in case that you are unaware, you can post the screenshot here in your topic. Click on 'Answer' & then click on the 'Image' [mountain symbol] & follow the instructions. 
AVG Guru

Hello Helmut,
We regret for the inconvenience caused. Since you have mentioned that you are expreincing issue with your background application, we would request you to check with your taskmanager whether your any of the application running at high CPU usage, in addition to that Could you please send the screenshot of your error messages so that we can assist further? Please click on the following link http://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?urlname=How-to-create-a-screenshot  to send the screen shot.
Thank you.