Is Baidu an Antivirus Software or a Spyware/Malware?

[TempoMat]

Why this question?

First a background history:

I had my Toshiba Laptop with WinXP which I use among other things for RCE go dead.
The battery does not hold long and I made a mistake by using it for just 5 minutes without the mains when the laptop turned off automatically due to low battery level, even though the battery shows about 90%
After connecting the power supply the laptop will not boot any more. Tried all possibilities like safe mode, last known configuration and whatever option I had but always ended up with a BSoD.

Per chance I found out that one of the memories has popped out of its hooks and was almost out of the socket. I was happy to find that and thought that could be the source of the cyclic reboot of WinXP. Nop the joy did not last long. After correcting it the Laptop will still not boot. The result was always the same ugly BSoD.

Because I had so many old programs and custom software (some DOS based, hence a small DOS partition before the WinXP partition) on the laptop, a format of the whole drive with a fresh install of WinXP was not to be considered an option at first for me. However I ended up doing a fresh install which was also not as smooth as I thought it could be. Then all attempt to reinstall WinXP ended up with the annoying message:

"This disk does not contain a windows xp-compatible partition" message where you go back and (re)create a partition, use existing partition, scratch your head, have a cup of tea but always end up back at the:-
" ***To install Windows XP on the partition you selected, Setup must write some startup files to the following disk:
However, this disk does not contain a Windows XP-compatible partition.

To continue installing Windows XP, return to the partition selection screen (did it several time) and create a Windows XP-compatible partition on the disk above (did this too). If there is no free space on the disk, delete an existing partition (and this too), and then create a new one (and that as well).

To return to the partition selection screen, press ENTER (done that, now go back to ***)."

Damn what is happening?
I goggled for almost two days without a finding a solution.

When I finally found the faint light at the end of the the dark tunnel, it was a problem of WinXP setup not been able to recognize the partition C:\ as primary, even though some partition managers like Paragon Partition Manager, MiniTool Partition Wizard, Easeus Partition Master and a few others I had tried could identify the partition as primary and active. PartedMagic could only identify the complete disc as unallocated.
The main culprit is actually Window��s ��Disk Management�� which could neither identify the partition C:\ as active under Windows XP nor Windows 7. The workaround was to first repair the partition with GParted and after that everything went like it is supposed to be.

So after some sleepless nights I was able to finally install WinXP with SP3 integrated and all Services Packs until February 2014 included. I made sure I had most of the needed programs installed and working before connecting the laptop to the internet. Once I was on the net, I installed some Security software like Spybot , Window Essentials and finally Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security. It was after the installation of Trend Micro and then jDownloader, that I realized of a sudden Baidu Antivirus is also installed. There was no request for the installation of Baidu Antivirus during the numerous installations I had done before and yet this program managed to install fully at the background.

The nightmare began, when I tried to uninstall Baidu.
These are what I tried with some failures:

1. Started with the usual Add or Remove Software from Windows. Strangely any time I opted to uninstall Baidu the computer became slow and eventually the ��Change or Remove Program�� window was closed.

2. Next step was to throw CCleaner at it. This was also closed immediately whenever I chose to uninstall Baidu.

3. Then it was the turn of Revo Uninstaller Pro, which was also terminated immediately.

4. Gradually I became and angrier. So I thought why not just go and delete the installation folder of Baidu.
Guess what that did not work either, then there were two processes from Baidu (an exe and a dll) running which made sure that its installation folder is not tempered with, like wise the registry keys.

5. Next idea was try to use Olly's attach option to attach any of the processes and destroy their PE Header. It was a nice thought but Olly couldn��t attached any of the two processes either.

6. What next should I do, I thought? I was gruadually running out of ideas. So I tried to terminate those two notorious processes from Baidu with ProcessExplorer und Unlocker still neither worked. Puh everything I threw at these two processes failed.

7. Finally I had to boot the laptop with Active@Boot and deleted the complete folder of Baidu. Unfortunately editing the host registry with Active@Boot did not work well for me so I had to boot the second time with UltimateBootCD to edit and remove all traces of Baidu in the registry. And trust me this notorious program had keys scattered all over the registry. They were so many I lost track and gave up noting down the names and values of the keys I was deleting.

Now coming back to the initial question, is Baidu an antivirus software or a Spyware/Malware, considering the effort the programmers made to prevent any attempt to terminate any one of their running processes, let alone avoiding deletion of the installation folder, registry keys and so on?

I thought only Spywares and Malwares mostly install themselves on a target in background and try all means to avoid their deletion/un-installation but not a program self claimed to be an Antivirus Software.

Or I am missing something?