Anti-malware Freeware Consumes a LOT of System Memory
The darkhorse that turned out to be a darksword…
‘Sucked my magic right out. Joram must be proud. Where’s the damned catalyst?!!
I got infected by the Imgkulot virus months back and all my freeware ICEs (read: anti-malware) couldn’t detect it. (Sorry, Net Runner fan haha!) Finally I went to this site that touted a list of some of the best freeware in the Internet and downloaded what it recommended. It worked — a bit. It detected the Imgkulot virus but unfortunately, wasn’t able to delete it. Still the detection was something so I kept the thing.
Just some nights ago, I checked my process manager (accessible by pressing ctrl-alt-del, pressing the Task Manager button and choosing the "Processes" tab in the resulting interface) and WHOA! a process was gobbling up 40-60Mb of my memory! Effer, I thought. I Googled the filename and gretchins and flayers, it led me back to the forums of that self-same anti-malware thingamagig I DL’d!
It seems that there is a bug with their software and killing its real-time protection won’t kill the process.
So much for on-demand scanning.
I tried killing it and true to what users were complaining about, the thing is immortal:
As you can see 62,548K. WOOOT?!! 0_0
I am uninstalling the software this very night. I mean c’mon, 60Mb?!! (By comparison, the AVG processes do not even amount to 4Mb in my system.)
There’s a lesson to all this:
Monitor your Processes every once in a while. If you see something gobbling up huge numbers, Google the damn thing. If you are SURE — VERY SURE — it’s not a vital system file and it’s something you can make without, kill it. (I take no responsibility if something adverse happens to your system though so do research and quadruple-check what you have learned.) If you can’t kill it (like the above) and the program is so much dead weight to you (or if it’s redundant in function — ie you have got several programs like it already), uninstall it.
I don’t need to tell you how precious a commodity RAM is to your system do I? 
(And no, it didn’t make an appearance in my "Best Free Anti-virus Anti-spyware I Use" article if you are asking.)
