Nvidia questions (Do I need these things running at startup?)

Stats:
HP Pavilion dv9500t
Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor T7250 (2.00 GHz, 2 MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)
Mobile Intel® PM965 Express Chipset.
Memory: 2GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
Graphics Card: 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
Hard Drive: 240GB 5400RPM SATA Dual Hard Drive (120GB x 2)

Keep in mind that this is a dv9500t that came with Vista and I installed XP Home on it instead -- I used the drivers provided/tested by mujjuman in this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=165319

The driver provided in his driver pack is the old nVidia Graphics Driver (101.34) (reason being, any newer drivers don't work with this laptop and cause issues with standby and hibernate).

When I check my driver info in Device Manager, this is the info it gives me:

Driver Version: 6.14.11.134
Driver Date: 5/22/2007

I'm not sure how that # corresponds with the 101.34 above though...

Questions:

I'm wondering if there are some Nvidia things that are loading at startup or are turned on automatically that don't need to be that may be having an effect? These are the Nvidia-related items I have that are in misconfig/startup:

Iaanotif.exe
From SysInfo
IAA Event Monitor User Notification Tool - part of Intel® Application Accelerator - "a performance software package for desktop PCs using select Intel® chipsets" that "replaces the ATA drivers that come with Windows with drivers optimized for desktop and mobile PCs." If you use the RAID version it's required to notify you if a RAID 1 disk has failed.
Note: I don't have a RAID hard drive (though I've read that this is also installed with some non-RAID drivers). I installed New Intel Chipset Driver (8.3.1.1009) and New Intel Matrix Storage SATA (7.8.0.1012) -- and this was part of it for some reason...

NvCpll.dll (rundll32.exe NvCpl.dll, NvStartup)
From SysInfo
Intializes the clock and memory settings on nVidia based graphics cards. Enable if you overclock your card

nwiz.exe (command is "nwiz /install")
From SysInfo
Nvidia nView Wizard - present with the newer versions of nVidia graphics cards drivers. Allows you to immensely improve desktop layouts by setting preferences and optimizations. If you use any of the special nView features available in the control panel leave this alone - otherwise you can disable it

And I'm not sure if this one is related:

Intel® Matrix Storage Event Monitor (Iaantmon.exe)
Not sure what this does really...

If I can/should turn any of that off, I'd prefer to do it within Nvidia options than disabling the startup item itself. Any thoughts on any of that?

I am also noticing that, well, it's hard to describe, but most of the time everything on my screen looks smooth/good -- but every 10 or 20 seconds, to my eye, it looks like the "smoothness" of things kind of "breaks apart" slightly and you can kind of see the dots or cross-hatch pattern that it's made up of. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's minor, although noticeable to my eye. Any thoughts on this? Note: I do have cleartype turned on (although when I go to the MS Cleartype site to "tune" it, it won't recognize that I have it turned on).

Let me know what you all think -- thanks!

 

I have both of those 2 nvidia programs disabled with msconfig. Rivatuner handles my clockspeed, so it loads my OC when my starts. I guess you could disable if you want, not sure about the intel one.