I don't think the suggestion is to uninstall your virus scanner and leave it uninstalled. Uninstalling it is a troubleshooting step that will identify whether the Anti-virus is actually the problem, so you can then take action after reinstalling the anti-virus. If you've ever watched the television program "House" consider it a part of the "differential diagnosis."
Check out the section "Tame your anti-virus" in this thread, for more info: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=86699.0
Exactly. It is a means to an end.
If uninstalling the anti-virus "fixes" it, then you know it is an issue with your Anti-Virus application, and can take action to address that.
If uninstalling/rebooting has no effect, then you know it ISN'T an issue with your Anti-Virus, and you can reinstall it, and focus on other possibilities.
And, it certainly does not "conflict" with every Anti-Virus application out there, and the behavior depends on the specifics of your machine. Think of it this way: The
job of an Anti-Virus application is to "interfere" with every single application that runs on your machine. It isn't a side-effect, it is the
goal. Before an application is allowed to run, or access any resource while it is running, the AV application has to scan it, generate a fingerprint, check the fingerprint, and then grant or deny access. That's what a background scanner does.
Generally, the slower your machine is, the greater the impact of this extra latency. As I mention in the above-linked thread, most machines I've used with MC take no special "fiddling" to make it work. However, I have encountered a few (using both Symantec Enterprise Protection and Windows Defender/MSSE) that require exceptions. The difference? Generally, the slower PCs require exceptions to have good performance, the faster ones (particularly those with fast SSDs), don't. It isn't always that, it can be interaction with other software or services running on the machine, and probably a whole raft of things, but it certainly seems to track with computer power (and specifically, disk speed).