On an unrelated note - maybe you have noticed that starting from 20.7, Avast stores most of its configuration settings (previously in avast5.ini / settings.ini) in registry. This is due to performance considerations of the ever increasing amount of settings we store - it was beginning to show.
So you will no longer find avast5.ini and most of other ini files in Avast’s Program Data folder and the new home for them is in Windows Registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\AVAST Software\Avast\properties. You can perform modifications using Windows Registry Editor or prepare .reg files to perform the modifications automatically; these can then be shared with other users as well. Note that Self-Defense must be turned off to perform the modifications (but you can turn it on automatically by including its SelfDefense=1 setting in the .reg file).
While this might break age-old habits, we believe this will significantly improve the performance of any settings-related tasks
INI files were comfortable to work with but they are inherently slow due to their text-encoded nature. This change additionally enables easier automation of changes to settings - you can now send custom-tailored .reg files to any users who need your help with a more complex configuration without affecting any of their local settings.
Hope it helps and let us know of any issues with this!
While this may speed thing up, it can also have serious consequences when novices start to play with the registry.
Messing up the .ini file may do harm to the Avast program, messing up the registry can bring down the entire system.
Most Avast users are not experts and really have no business ever doing any changes in the registry.
We also know that not being an expert, will not prevent the novice from trying.
I understand, however no changes can be made due to Self-Defense being on by default anyway. This should shield it from uninformed attempts and hopefully poeple will not advise others to blindly venture into registry when it's just as easy to send them a .reg file that does the required operation for them, risk-free.
While the .ini files were at first chosen as a easy way to be able to manually adjust settings, Avast's complexity has grown and I would hope not so many people play with the .ini files now anymore - hopefully it's easier to do in the GUI and if not, let us know what to improve. At the same time I would hope that posting/sharing a .reg file that (on double-click) turns something on or off for people is actually easier and safer than letting them to edit the .ini file themselves. But feel free to convince me otherwise.
Thanks for the feedback!