newbie to avast some help?

[Southern Man]

Hi there,i have just downloaded avast 4.6.603 to give it a try out and because i want an e-mail scanner too which avast gives me,i am trying to get to grips of  how to use AVAST ,i have used 2 other free avs so far (AVG and ANTI-VIR) so am used to the setting up,most of the settings seem clear,i have a few questions to ask so i hope this is not a boring repeat?.

1/ After clicking on the Avast Shortcut Icon on the Desktop all the lower toolbar goes GREEN and all the DESKTOP ICONS(written descriptions underneath icons) e.g yahoo messenger or internet explorer all of them seem to be white writing in coloured BLUE BOXES?,why?,it then does a memory test and then a small box appears the SUI which is not easily read faded?,so i then click on MENU/SHOW THE PROGRAM MENU and i cannot change the skin it is greyed out?,cannot get another skins box,yet earlier on i could?,also the DESKTOP ICONS seem to reboot with AVAST when an action is performed?
2/Is it possible to do a SCHEDULED AV SCAN at a pre-determined time/day ect like sunday 8.00pm every week?,i cannot find anything that allows this?,only a bootup scan which i do not want everytime i start up my pc and have to wait 30+ minutes?.
3/My lower toolbar is so green that i cannot even see the two blue icons for avast?,whats going on here?,i cannot get anything to work properly,i am dissapointed with avast sorry guys i will have to un-install it,it did work earlier on and i did a scan no probs but now its like the INCREDIBLE GREEN GIANT(HULK),back to anti-vir!,sorry.
4/It seems that AVAST 4.6.063 web scanner is only recognised in ZONE ALARM version 5.5.062.011,should not the avast main program be recognised too?- AVPE guard AND program was recognised in ZONE ALARM.

Shame i was expecting a long time and good experience with avast,good write ups and good detection rates.If you can help i will try again later on,but for now its a no goer.

regards

southern man(disappointed)

[Vlk]

1. About the "green icons" issue:
    a. What operating system are you using?
    b. What color depth does your screen resolution have? I mean - 256 colors, or 65565 ("high color") or 4millions ("true color"). The effects you're describing could theoretically be seen if you were running with a 256 color display and the system would have to be swapping pallettes...

2. About the scheduler - sorry, this feature is not available in the free Home Edition

3. About ZoneAlarm: I'm not sure what you're talking exactly but if it's the ZA's (in)ability to "detect" 3rd party AV's then there's been some discussion about this on the forum already - please see e.g. http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=6770.0


Cheers
Vlk

[xistenz]

Also try to update your graphics card drivers.

[Eddy]

2] There is a way to do it with the Home version, but you must use the taskscheduler for it.

[DavidR]

2. There is a work around - HOWTO: Scheduled Automatic Scans w/ Free Version!

The major disadvantage with the task scheduler trick of using ashquick.exe is, it will scan every file of the hdd, partition, folder or file that you set it to scan; even those files not considered a potential threat, this can a long time.

The Pro version gives a lot more flexibility and the scan would follow the settings and exclusions, etc. of the regular scan.