Is MAE Up and Running? I Can't Tell...(?)

[Lidarose]

How does one tell if MAE is actually up and running?  There's no icon in my tray to click on and no options or preferences that I can locate.  I don't know how to tell if it's actually running in the background anywhere...(?)  It is firmly installed in my WIN 7 program files folder, however, but I have to click on the shortcut on my desktop in order to open it and it closes when I "x" out of it.

 

Also, it states, "shielded applications, zero"...I thought the free version would protect IE, Firefox and Java...(?)

 

Thanx,

Lida