craigjo (Craig):
... If this is not an issue, I'll just leave it there. ...
It may not be a critical issue, but I believe that because the detection returns after fixing, it is something that may be worth looking into.
If you went into Start > Control Panel > Security Center > and then looked at the right hand side of the window, checked the settings under "Virus Protection" and found Windows Security Center is not monitoring your anti-virus, that is not necessarily a "good" thing.
If you or some friendly software is not intentionally stopping Windows Security Center from monitoring your "Virus Protection" than something else is.
The value of the Windows Security Center monitoring your "Virus Protection" is that if something shuts down the active agent of your anti-virus and Windows Security Center is monitoring your "Virus Protection", you will be notified.
For example: In my system Windows Security Center is monitoring my anti-virus, which in my case is Avira Antivir. If I inadvertently shut down the active component of my anti-virus (Antivir Guard - avguard.exe) or something in my system shuts it down, Windows Security Center notifies me (see Note #1). Although this is not an absolute protection, it adds a second level of notification that something may be amiss with the active agent component of my anti-virus protection.
In summary, I can't tell if the detection that you are getting is an issue or not. But I can say that without Windows Security Center monitoring your "Virus Protection" you may not be taking full advantage of the protection offered by the Windows Security Center.
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Note #1: To test the notification, I just shut down my Antivir Guard (avguard.exe) to see how long it took for Windows Security Center to notify me. With the mouse in my right hand to stop Antivir Guard and a stopwatch in my left to time the Windows Security Center notification, I missed timing the event twice because from the time I clicked to disable Antivir Guard and the appearance of the warning bubble from Windows Security Center was too quick to time accurately. On the third try there was an intervening bubble notification from the new beta version of TeaTimer concerning a process scan and I timed the event I was looking for at 1.3 seconds.