pyotr filipivich wrote:

there is nothing in the startup menus which I can determine starts
msinfo32.exe. Part of the problem is, I've yet to find out why
msinfo32.exe is being run _at all_,

The Start menu's Startup folder (under your profile and under the All
Users profile) is just one of *MANY* places to specify a program loads
on Windows load, on login, on an event, as a scheduled task, etc. Did
you actually yet use msconfig.exe to look at the list of startup items?
If it is listed in msconfig then you need something more robust to list
all startup locations, like SysInternals' AutoRuns (where you can even
search on "msinfo" to find it is defined in the dozens and dozens of
startup locations).

other than apparently because MS thinks it a neat idea to run it.

Wrong. No version of Windows has ever had msinfo32.exe as a default
startup program.