Possible Duplicates:
Detect Antivirus on Windows using C#
How to detect if a virusscanner and/or firewall is installed? (And a few other security-related Q's.)
is there a way to detect currently instaled av without searching for known processes?
Yes there is. You can use WMI, I assume you are asking about Windows, to check installed instances of an anti-virus program. It is quite simple from C# and this link gives a good explanation of how to do it. It is also possible to access WMI from C++ and that is explained here. Also for anything WMI related I highly recommend the WMI Studio.