avast! on SanDisk Cruzer Micro

[rwaters]

I just purchased a SanDisk Cruzer Micro 512MB USB drive that is U3 enabled. One of the applications installed on the drive is a trial version of the U3 edition of avast! (version 1.0.81).

I have set up avast! on the USB drive to start the virus shields when the device is inserted, but a tray icon (indicating that the shield is active) does not appear until I actually launch the application itself. Is there a way to tell whether the shield is in fact running, without having to start the program? I've looked at the running processes in Windows Task Manager but nothing jumped out at me.

It's not really a problem when I insert the USB drive in my own computer (which is protected by avast! Home Edition), but there is always a risk when plugging it in to some other machine.

Thanks.

...Edit...

I probably should have mentioned my settings, which is attached here. My own machine is logged as Trusted, which prevents it from being scanned when the device is inserted. What isn't clear is whether this option also disables the resident virus shields.

[igor]

Does the SanDisk U3 launcher start automatically when you insert the U3 drive into your computer?

[rwaters]

Hi Igor,

The U3 Launcher does start on device insertion, and there is an option to automatically start avast! as well. I have the avast! option unchecked because I generally don't want the application itself to start automatically. However, I was expecting the resident protection to be active just like avast! works on a "regular" PC, based on my avast! settings.

What I'm wondering is whether setting my PC as a trusted machine just prevents scanning on device insertion, or completely disables the virus shields as well. Since my "trusted" machine (running avast! Home Edition) will presumably catch infected files on the flash disk, it might even make sense to disable resident protection on the USB drive. I'm just not sure how the program is supposed to work. But in any case, I don't intend to give any machine trusted status unless it is one of my own PCs, running a known antivirus program.

[igor]

Well, the program has to be started SOMEHOW.
The idea behind the U3 drives is the following:
1. You insert the device into a computer; it actually appears as two devices to the operating system - one ordinary USB drive (with all the user's content), and one CD-ROM (with the launchpad executable and autostart inifile only).
2. Windows detects a new media in the CD-ROM and starts the autostart executable - if the autostart option is enabled in Windows, of course.
3. This way, the U3 LaunchPad is started.
4. The LaunchPad prepares the environment for the installed programs, and starts those that are marked to be executed automatically.

So, the U3 edition of avast! has no way of being started automatically itself. The autostart option has to be enabled in Windows (for the CD-ROM), so that the U3 LaunchPad is started, and simultaneously - avast! must be marked to be started automatically by the LaunchPad.

avast! Home/Pro is different, of course - it's installed in the host OS directly, and registered to be started automatically by Windows.

[rwaters]

Well, I may have asked one of the more stupid questions ever posed in a forum here. I realize the resident protection needs to be started somehow, but wasn't aware of how the U3 system works. It's clear now that I have to allow the Launcher to start avast!, and then let the avast! settings take control. Thanks for the explanation.

What I was originally thinking is that if my machine is "trusted" (meaning it has an antivirus application installed and running), why not let my host's antivirus program handle the USB drive as well, rather than have two antivirus applications running. I was looking for a setting under the "trusted host" category that would basically disable avast! on a trusted system if desired, similar to the option to disable the start-up scan. But maybe that is a bad idea for any number of reasons. On the other hand, I would definitely want avast! to be running on a non-trusted system, so at the U3 level avast! would need to be configured to start.

In any case, I understand what is going on now. Thanks again for the clarification.