Doesn't solve the actual problem, but I'd suggest ditching that awful bloatware and just get
Microsoft Security Essentials. It won't spam you to buy stuff, it won't pop up and annoy you all the time when you're just trying to run legitimate programs, and it won't eat up your system resources. It'll auto-update through Windows Update, it'll automatically scan your computer in the background, etc. Vastly better than any third-party "security suite" or anti-virus I've ever tried.