The simplest way to sort through running services is perhaps ctrl+alt+delete to display running services and just do a google search of the service names. Sites such as LIUtilites are excellent resources for identifying the processes and qualifying them as essential, non-essential or suspect.
Once you've familiarized yourself with what services are normal, it's a snap to quickly spot potential problems simply by noting number of processes running and what normal process isn't running and/or what new process is running.
Hope this helps!