OK, now that I'm past my problems getting my backups scheduled I've moved on to trying to schedule scans. Using BitDefender Total Security 2008 Trial version on Windows Vista Home Premium.

When I open the scan properties on the "overview" page there is an option labeled "minimize scan window to sys tray". If I enable this option, my scans never run and my system becomes slow to the point that it's unusable. Subsequently unchecking the box still does not cause the scans to run, rather I must uncheck the box and then reboot the computer for them to ever run.

The closest thing I could find in the forums here was a problem some people were having on XP with the scan window disappearing from the sys tray after showing it then trying to minimize it again, but this is something completely different. And if I start a scan unminimized I can restore and minimize at will with no problem.

If I open the antivirus scan tab and watch when it's time for a scan to run, where it says "last run: never" briefly changes to read "scanning". About 2 or 3 seconds later it goes back to saying "last run: never" and the system slowdown then happens. I can manually invoke the scan and it will run, but manually invoking it runs it in a visible window rather than in the system tray. Even after manually running it, it still will not launch automatically after that if it is still set to run minimized.

As for the system slowdown, I can't figure out what's causing it. Task manager shows the system to be in its normal idle state, even though it takes about 4 to 5 minutes for task manager to open. No BD process is using excessive resources and I have idle cpu in the high 90s and physical RAM use well under 50%, so my guess is that its somehow interfering with the real-time scanning and that's what's slowing everything down. I timed firefox, for example, and it took 9 minutes and 35 seconds to launch after the system slowdown (it normally takes under 2 seconds to launch with real-time scanning).

For now, I can set scans not to run minimized, but I need some advice on this as I definitely don't want the scanning window thrown in my face every time it starts a scan.