I wanted to update this.

I was hasty to say it worked perfectly, but it did do exactly what I asked for. I am grateful for the removal of those bubbles, I didn't like them, but the pausing problem still persisted after doing that (I didn't notice at first because there was no more bubble to click, which previously initiated the pause).

I went into the startup tab in msconfig and disabled "HP digital imaging - HP all-in-one series" from running at startup. Now there is no more pausing.

Thanks again for the help