@arkham618
I had the problem of avast scanning constantly (blue ball icon spinning incessantly) on my new laptop and on my mother's new laptop when we first got them. Neither was the fault of avast, it was doing what it was supposed to do, scan files as they run. The problem was that on both systems there were processes starting with Windows that were constantly searching/accessing the hard disk, etc.
I suggest you go to Start>Run type msconfig, click on the startup tab and make note of all your startup items. Google the different processes and check if any can be disabled safely without adversely affecting the system (you would be surprised how many startups are really unneeded). You may find posts at different sites from other users who have had problems with certain processes that you may also have. PCMService.exe was the offending startup on my Dell laptop. Once I disabled it from starting with Windows my problem disappeared and it was a totally unneeded process anyway. I don't remember the process that caused the problem on my mother's system but it too was unneeded, plus it had two copies of itself running before I disabled it.
