autoprotect should give you a little icon in your system tray, you can disable it if you want to. also, it monitor your computer, and it will tell you if a virus has been detected Etc...
Are you saying that autoprotect will not turn on, if so, i had the same problem, it turned out that there is a certain virus that blocks norton anti-virus, i reformatted, re-installed norton, and never had the problem again.