Always while running a-squared Free, a-squared Anti-Malware or Mamutu, a service is automatically installed and started. Its process name is a2servic.exe

Short Explanation:

While the graphic user interface only serves for controlling and output, the service does the actual processing.

Detailed Explanation:

Modern operating systems such as Windows XP or Vista work with a complex system of access rights. The logged in user should ideally not have administrator rights, because otherwise any malware the user starts by mistake would obtain full administrator rights as well and thus could access the whole system for carrying out its full malicious effects. Limited rights are hence more useful and in most cases perfectly appropriate for daily work, and it eliminates the danger of erroneous manipulation of the operating system in advance.

All programs started by a user with limited rights are automatically assigned the same access level. But this is not sufficient for deep system software such as security software. A malware scanner would only be able to scan and clean those files for which the user has full read and write access. System data and program files would be inaccessible, and with limited rights the Malware-IDS could not activate its system wide behaviour observation.

This is why the functional work of the software has been shifted to a windows service that starts with system (administrator) rights instead of limited user rights. The graphic user interface of the programs (a2free.exe, a2start.exe, a2guard.exe) controls how the service works and allows for configuration and output.

Even if you normally use your computer with administrator rights, it does not make sense to shut the service down. It is automatically reactivated each time the program starts and does not use but a very small part of the RAM when idle.

Optionally, the software is designed to work as well without the service in case of need. This may, for example, be necessary to operate in Windows Safe Mode too. Services are deactivated in Safe Mode. However, when you start the a-squared scanner in Safe Mode, it loads the signatures directly in the main process a2scan.exe or a2free.exe.