Does Avast Pro scan USB thumb drives upon plugging in?

[Texas-Hansen]

When I plug in a USB thumb drive (or even put in a CD or DVD disk with days on it) does Avast Pro automatically scan the USB thumb drive upon plugging it in?

[DavidR]

avast doesn't scan it as a matter of course, it is an on-access scanner, so something must access the file/s to initiate a scan of the accessed file/s.

This obviously doesn't scan all files on the CD/DVD (could take a very long time) or usb flash drives, only those files accessed or run depending on your standard shield sensitivity and settings. When this is set to High it will scan more files but these too would first have to have had something try to run or access them first.

Using windows explorer you could right click on the drive letter and select Scan selected areas for viruses, this would use the ashQuick.exe scan which is the most thorough of the scans.

[Lisandro]

USBVirusScan will launch any program you provide as a command line parameter each time a USB stick is inserted. I use it to start a full virus scan on the inserted USB drive: http://blog.didierstevens.com/programs/usbvirusscan/

The command-line that worked for me is:
"<path>\USBVirusScan.exe" -c -i "<path>\avast4\ashQuick.exe" x:

Where you need to change the <paths> for the both correct ones and the x: for the letter of your USB drive.

[DavidR]

What are the -c and -i for Tech ?

[Lisandro]

What are the -c and -i for Tech ?

USBVirusScan uses a system tray icon and balloons to announce the insertion of a USB drive. If you want to hide this system tray icon, start USBVirusScan with option -i.
You can also hide the command line console with option -c. This only works with Console applications, not with Windows applications.

[DavidR]

Thanks, I have been having some fun and games with it and finally got it working, to do the scan when a USB is inserted, but it doesn't want to write the .log file.

Well I say that but I see the last file scanned with the ashQuick.exe (using the show results of explorer extension) is the log file I have set in the start.bat file. Yet it doesn't show up when I try to find it in explorer even with all the usual show hidden files, etc. enabled.