Yep - 47 processes is pushing it a tad . Try downloading mlins startup control panel which will allow you to disable much of the guff which loads with your system at startup if in doubt as to which processes to disable let us know & im sure we can work it out - http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

You may prefer to go with FSautostart which disables these things just when you start FS - not for me though.

You may want to go with omega drivers, I use them with great results, gives you lots of options without having that top heavy Ati control panel thingy:
http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati/win2k_xp.php

The graphics drivers which are on the disks supplied by dell will probably be several months old by now. You need to remove your old drivers by going to control panel/add remove programs. Removing "ATi control panel" may be enough to do the trick, if there's something called "CCC" then remove that too.

So something like this -
Download the ATi omega drivers (suggest onto desktop)
Uninstall ati drivers as described above from "add remove programs".
Restart & then run the omega install package.

To my memory thats how it works, I tend just to do it without thinking so I can't remember..............

(PS. the startup program installs a module in the control panel "startup" which is where you run it from)

You shouldn't need to ??? Never heard of that before but then its not beyond the scope of imagination that Dell have hacked at the drivers to only allow Dell drivers.