Anti virus question(s)

[Willy2]

1. Ever since I installed an antivirus program it takes a considerable amount of time for my laptop to reach a normal low level of activity. It seems the anti virus program keeps accessing (writing ?/reading ?) the harddisk for a much longer time than without the antivirus program (from AdAware).

 

The CLEANMEM system tray icon (very helpful tool) and the CM monitor (in the bottom right hand side of the screen) both show that memory usage (e.g. file cache) also remains much higher for much longer. This would suggest that the anti virus program scans the entire disk for virusses and malware. I asked some friends but they didn't know what's occurring. Can anyone provide an answer ?

 

2. This behaviour of (any ?) anti virus program would also explain why, as time goes by, the amount of time for scanning the harddisk gradually seems to increase before a computer settles down to a normal low activity level after a startup. After all, Microsoft issues every month new updates/hotfixes and when a user doesn't remove those updatefiles then this increasing amount of files simply takes more and more time to be scanned for virusses. Am I on the right track with these thoughts ?

 

3. Besides the questions posed above there's another related problem. I know in Windows XP which folders to clean in order to get rid of those old update files and in what folders the, what I would call, ""Unistall info"" is stored that allows the user to uninstall a Windows update. But on my new laptop (with Win 7) it's much less obvious where all that info is stored. Perhaps there're any tools/programs around that can remove all those obsolete files in Win 7 ? And while we're talking about Win 7: Can any one recommend a good Win 7 help forum ? Are there any forums dedicated to Win 7 ?

Edited June 5, 2011 by Willy2