Startup processes on a Toshiba M400

Or, "What is all this stuff doing on my computer", part II.

I've just finished switching my portable life over to a new Toshiba M400 Tablet PC. Gig of memory, Centrino Core Duo, life is good.

At least, it was good until I looked at the process list in task manager. Then it was that same feeling of horror all over again. The situation was bad on my old Toshiba Portege 3500. But this is worse.

Here are all the I'm-pretty-sure-these-aren't-vanilla-Windows processes that are still running after it's finished startup. I give descriptions where I think I know what a particular startup process does, otherwise I just quote the description field.

  1. 00THotkey.exe - Enables use of function keys to control laptop functions
  2. APntEx.exe - Touchpad driver (from Alps)
  3. APoint.exe - And another touchpad driver (from Alps)
  4. CrossMenu.exe - "CrossMenu Main"
  5. hkcmd.exe - "hkcmd Module" (from Intel)
  6. igfxpers.exe - "persistence Module" (from Intel)
  7. TAcelMgr.exe - Acceleration manager (what does that mean?)
  8. ThpSrv.exe - Parks your hard disk if you knock the laptop
  9. TMESRV31.exe - "Toshiba MobileExtension Service"
  10. TMETEMnu.exe - "Toshiba MobileExtension", spawned by TMESRV31
  11. TSkrMain.exe - Acceleration "shaker" utility (what does that mean?)
  12. TFNF5.exe - Switch laptop video output using Fn-F5
  13. TRot.exe - Match screen orientation to rotation of tablet screen
  14. TouchEd.exe - Turns touchpad on and off
  15. TFncKy.exe - "TFncKy"
  16. TPSMain.exe - Toshiba power saver applet
  17. TPSBattM.exe - Spawned by TPSMain, probably battery-specific
  18. TMERzCtl.exe - "TMERzCtrl"

In my original post, I counted 11 extra startup processes from Toshiba on a Portege 3500. In just two hardware generations, they've out-done themselves with 18 startup processes. Pretty soon there'll be more random systray applets than there are regular Windows processes. As it is, they're already sucking down 70 MB of working set. Good thing I've got a gig...

Can anyone provide more details of what each of these processes does? And (perhaps more usefully!) has anyone experimented with msconfig or autoruns to see the effects of disabling each of them?