I think this is clearly a culprit, and the only one I need solved myself. When I backed up my start menu folders and deleted everything in them, my scanned count on startup dropped from about 230 to 12 (!!).
What can be done about this?
Hi everyone.
I have the same problem with all exe files getting scanned (fortunately only about 150 but still annoying). System is XP with Sygate Firewall, Spybot (not in startup), Spywareblaster (not in startup) and avast! Home with the Standard Shield set to 'normal' (the other five providers are also running). Tasks running on after XP startup is something between 30 and 40 (not very precise I know...).
I can assure that it is the explorer.exe that causes avast!-activity. Because if you kill explorer.exe through Task Manager due to a hang up and relaunch explorer.exe you'll have the same long avast!-activity (exe scanning) like on Windows startup.
What exactly did you mean with backing up your start menu folder? Did you move it away for one restart and re-"installed" it after the restart? Or did you move it into a completely new folder and left it there?
Excluding explorer.exe in the scan is definitive no secure solution and moving the start menu folder is also not the way I wanna solve this problem.
Last but not least a big applause for the avast! guys! I'm using it now for one and a half year and feeling safe ;-) I also recommended and/or installed it to some colleagues. How many anti-spyware programs do you use? I'm just wondering if the ones I have are sufficient.
