Cancel AVG through task manager gives "Access Denied"

Question

When I start up my computer (windows 7), AVG starts up. Usually this isnt a bad thing, but recently it's been taking up close to 40 percent of the listed CPU according to task manager. When I right-click on the process and select end process, it just says "Access Denied" I'm on an administrator account, and I should have full access. A while ago I took "ownership" of the whole system32 file, so I assume that extends to the AVG subfolder. Anyway, I tried to edit the permissions (through properties>security>modify permissions) but that still said access denied. I then tried through windows explorer, and got the same result, even though it said my account was the owner of the file. No user had full permissions, TrustedInstaller, System, Administrator, or Users. As I only have close to 50 gigs left on my current hard drive, I'd like to solve this without downloading anything, though if I need to I will. Any recommendations about how to do this?

Thanks ~Keelen

Answer 1

How about you just use the AVG application (from the Start Menu) to disable AVG's features and services, rather than killing processes.

http://www.avg.com/au-en/faq.num-4498

As magicandre1981 correctly points out, AVG will protect itself from being shut down even by a user with Admin privileges. Why? Because if you could shut it down, then so could malware that has gained Admin privileges. And that wouldn't be a good thing!

Incidentally, Admin privilages don't give you unlimited powers. Windows still prevents an interactive user with Admin privilages from doing things it deems out of bounds. If I can find some documentation on this I'll add the link here.

Answer 2

This is a self protection that a lot of Anti Virus tools include so that malware can't shutdown the Anti Virus tool. Maybe AVG includes a setting to disable this protection.