Questions about my new notebook

I bought a new notebook a month ago from an on line retailer. The computer it's self is fantastic! My main concern came about when I installed all the drivers on the included cd after I installed windows xp pro.

A bunch of programs and processes are running at start up (59) most of which I don't even know what they do. On my desktop I was able to get my motherboard and video drivers from nVidia and everything was done with. After limiting some things with spybot my desktop booted with 13 processes and very low memory usage.

My laptop now boots with fifty nine process and uses a whooping 500MB of memory before I even open up another program. The lower right hand corner of my task bar looks like a Christmas tree!

According to customer support from where i bought the notebook, they said everything I need is on that cd and that I don't need to update anything... ever....

I know thats wrong because I update my drivers for my desktop all the time. Some of the drivers on my laptop are from 2003! (may or may not have an updated version).

So my question is: How can I find out exactly what drivers I need so I can download the latest and bypass all these other programs that came with them on the cd?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks for the helpful reply! I'm planning on reinstalling windows and starting from fresh so this should work out well for me. My motherboard has the Mobile Intel 945PM Express Chipset Looking at the driver and software downloads available. It seems that the only thing I need is the INF Update Utility. Is this the same as the driver install on the CD but updated or do i just use generic windows drivers and this utility tweaks them a bit?

[edit]
I should mention that on my driver cd, the touch pad, microphone, speakers, everything thats on the motherboard was a separate driver install. It wasn't like with my desktop where I just installed my nForce drivers and everything was all nicely packaged together. Does this have any significant impact on what I should be looking for?
[/edit]

My video is the ATI Mobility Radeon X1600. I should be able to get the mobility drivers from ATI's website.

Audio is Realtek HD. I should be able to find those as well.

There are a few other things I will need the drivers for like a built in webcam and memory stick reader but I shouldn't have a problem finding those.

Is there anything I could be overlooking? Is there anything that I have wrong with the motherboard and chipset? Also do I need all that intel wireless stuff? Windows can handle my wireless connection by its self can't it?

Thanks again!

 

For finding out what gear you have on any machine you can't go past:
Everest Home
It even gives you the links to the vendors drivers and support pages.
I love it.

 

Thanks mulletgut! I'll check it out when I get home!

 

Codestuff's Starter will get you control over what starts up.

Starter http://codestuff.tripod.com/
Allows up to see what programs are run at Startup, and add or delete them, as desired.

Process Explorer will tell you what is running at any time..

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4566

 

I just wanted to give an update for everyone. I reinstalled windows and updated my drivers and carefuly went though and picked out all the crap that my driver install CD said i needed. I am now running my notebook with half the number of process as before and I've saved over 200mb of memory. I am very pleased! Thanks so much for the help!