@jowainekni598 I'm glad to hear I've been able to help somewhat. For the HP software, you can disable the services from running at all. If you realize you do need some service to be active, or at least be able to start when necessary, you can reverse the process.
Hit Windows key-R and enter msconfig in the run box in the lower-left corner. In the Services tab, click the box to hide all Microsoft services—you would never want to disable these unless you knew exactly what you were doing and why. For those services still listed, look for anything with HP in its name, and try disabling a few to see what happens. Then restart your computer. As mentioned, if you don't like the results, reverse the process.
I can't tell you which services to disable because I have no idea what you'll find. But for any given entry, you can google its name and probably find exactly what application it belongs to, then go from there. Some HP support or information-gathering app is probably not helpful to you: the latter is just sending your data to HP, and you could reenable the former if you were planning to reach out to HP support about a specific issue.
If you want me to look over the list, just post a screenshot. But this is a safe process in general. It's part of a clean boot, which is a common troubleshooting step; the difference is, in a clean boot, you disable all non-Microsoft services, then selectively reenable them until you find the cause of whatever problem you're trying to solve. Here, you're only targeting HP-related bloatware, although you can of course try disabling everything to see how much it lowers RAM use.
For the mod-related issue, I see you're in good hands with luthienrising. She knows a lot more about mods than I do, in fact more than anyone else on this site, so she'll give you the best help available here.
