Free AS run as services; mem usage.

[Tarq57]

Done a bit of playing around with AdAware2007, Asquared, and AVG AS. (All free/demand scanner versions.)
It's been the source of a little controversy that these all run as services on windows startup, unless set to manual. And if AVG's is set to manual, it won't even start.
The necessity of Asquared service, which doesn't use much, was adequately addressed at the Asquared forum, I think, and I'm quite happy to leave it be.
AVG's (7.5.136) doesn't use much either, I haven't bothered to look/see if anyone is commenting on it.
But AdAware uses 20-30 megs, 21 on my computer, and up to 30 reported on some. Seems rather too much for a demand scanner. (This is before the program is even opened, or after it's closed, BTW.)
Now for the interesting part.
If AVG is opened, and commanded to scan the memory, which takes two or three minutes, the mem usage of both asquared and Adaware drop. In Adaware's case, to 500Kb! In Asquared, to about 400.
Haven't done this and tried a restart, yet, to see if it "holds", but I'm pretty impressed. I'd read somewhere that AVG's scanner released memory as it went, that's the most graphic demonstration I've seen of it.

[Franklin]

Open taskmanager and check explorer's mem usage.

Leave it open and now open my computer then minimize to taskbar.

Recheck explorer's mem usage.Now you know how it's done.

Works the same for a lot of apps by minimizing the gui, even taskmanager itself.

In order to get Firefox to dump some memory the same way you need to use the about:config setting.
http://www.tweakguides.com/Firefox_9.html

config.trim_on_minimize [Boolean] (False) *Create - This setting only works in Windows, and determines whether Firefox - much like other Windows applications - reduces its memory usage when minimized to the Taskbar. If set to true (the default), it will use less memory when minimized, which is useful for systems with low RAM and multiple open applications. However if set to false it will speed up minimizing/maximizing Firefox, as it will not constantly attempt to reduce and reclaim RAM, and this can also increase stability - thus I recommend a setting of false for most people.

[Tarq57]

Franklin
Yes, I see that works, and also applies to a few other applications when minimized (of the few I've tried, anyway).
Are you suggesting there is some kind of shortcut way to reduce the aawservice
usage without running a mem scan using AVG AS?