background programs

that's a difficult thing to figure out.  personally I would not allow HP to automatically update and would turn that off.  as for anything else, I'd google each one and see what they do before deciding.  you can cause your system to be unstable if you turn off the wrong thing.

I'd also go into msconfig and disable hp automatic update and anything else that's not necessary instead of turn it off by the task manager every time I booted the machine.   the msconfig will not load the program to begin with next time you boot it.

With today's pc's you don't need to worry about these background processes running int he background. Its old folklore.
Its not needed anymore with recent pc's
Cj