With any of these programs whether AVG, Spyware Terminator, Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D, and a long list others you simply open the msconfig utility and look in both the startup and services tabs for the items they have there and simply uncheck the boxes next to them. But that will also disable any autpupdate feature they have too.
Make sure you check the hide all Microsoft services box when going into the services tab since you could accidently disable the wrong thing namely an eseential background service for Windows there. Fortunately however you can always go back in and re-enabled anything you disable even if you have to boot up in safe mode. A system restart is required to see any changes put into effect.
alright I completely forgot about the services tab and always look at the startup tab, I guess I should disable anything symantic since I dont want/need real time protection as well. When I run these programs to do a scan thought will their services start up automatically?