So just to confirm the adding the line in the avast5.ini as per the guidance above and also at
http://www.techsupportalert.com/freeware-forum/security/3137-avast-5-configuration-for-faster-start-up.htmlWorked for me on windows 7 64-bit.
I'm on a quad core machine with 12GB memory, so no slouch of a machine.
I was seeing load times for Avast of 220 seconds plus in soluto with v long boot time overall prior to this, and following the setting change we're looking at ~ 24 secs load time for avast.
I'd also tried the other fixes in terms of running the prefetcher setup in windows 7 which worked briefly following 6 reboots to train the OS again, but not so long after it went back to long boot again.
We'll see how this goes with more time.
I set
AlwaysConnectedWaitSeconds=360
Of course the file is stored in C:\ProgramData\Alwil Software\Avast5
Thanks folks