Avast 6 - how to turn off autmatic boot scan. (Takes forever)

[stinky]

Hello -

Please instruct me on how to turn off boot scan.  Thank you!

[DavidR]

There is no automatic boot-time scan, it is a manual select and is a one shot deal, once complete, that is it unless you schedule it again.

If a scan is in progress, using the Esc button (as per instruction displayed on the screen) should stop it. See images, is this what you mean by the boot-time scan.

The latest avast version is 7.0.1456, so I would suggest that you update your version.

[stinky]

Thank you for your fast response.

When I turn on PC, the green hard drive light stays on for at least 20 mins or more.  I thought that was because of the boot scan.
(I see "not schedule" in boot scan dialogue)

If I put heuristics to 'low' 0 or 'off'- would that speed up Avast 'doing its thing' when the PC is turned on?

I tried Avast 7 but gave me problems.

Thank you.

[DavidR]

If a boot-time scan was running then you should see the boot-time scan screen, if you don't see it then that isn't what is happening. But to find why the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) light is green is a whole different ball game, if whilst that is on if avast were scanning something (it is an on-access scanner) then the avast tray icon would be rotating also.

In all honesty sticking with the old version isn't going to help as essentially if you find a problem with it (if truly a problem in avast 6) then it is unlikely to have any further investigation on an old version.

Have (or did) you another Anti-Virus installed in this system, if so what was it and how did you get rid of it ?
What is your operating system and  firewall ?
What other security software do you have installed, anti-spyware, etc. ?

So again I would suggest that you should get the latest version of avast and do a clean install, if some of the answers to the above questions don't give any pointers to what might be creating the activity on the HDD.