Kotuku

The Recovery partition is put there by your computer assembler (Like Dell or HP) and contains an exact copy of your system as at the time you bought it. IT IS NOT to have any other files added and certainly not for your own backups. If you have a system failure to the point where you can't recover, then pressing a certain key combination when it boots up puts you into a point where you can restore the system to exactly how it was the day you bought it. For most that would be a pain in the butt and certainly you lose all data UNLESS it is backed up. Buy an external USB drive for your backups, they are cheap enough and get a 1 Tb one for less than $100 (or close to that) and set up automatic backups to that device. If your system is running well and you have all the programs installed that you want, firstly make a disk image to the new USB drive, it may take half a day (depends on what is on your computer) but now you can use the Operating System disk to restore your computer exactly to this point in time. If you have deleted all the files on the original recovery partition, then you REALLY need to get this USB based backup and disk image done this weekend!

Best double dose of protection I have found is Prevx3. Runs silently with a small footprint and makes an excellent second tier protection. I would also use Microsoft Security Essentials as the first line of defense. At least it behaves well with the installed MS OS. I think you need to get to the bottom and eliminate the poor Avira uninstall. Try installing either of the free programs REVO UNINSTALLER or ZSOFT UNINSTALLEr and see if it can root out the left overs from Avira. You may even have to install again Avira and then use REVO in aggressive mode to clean it properly out of the registry. Note the Free Revo doesn't work on 64 bit OS only the paid version. I have found Malwarebytes better to run as a batch process, say once per week, and not have it running in the background. Certainly not needed if you use Prevx3, as that does a good job on most things

If you qualify to join Microsoft Technet, then you can pay US$150 (approx) and get access to EVERY MS program for evaluation purposes and 10 legitimate licence keys for each program. A bargain if you are running a network with more than one PC and Office 2010 alone for 2-3 PC's covers your cost.