Avast scan shuts down with Screen control?

[180pilot]

On my laptop (Fujitsu) running Vista, I have the advanced power settings in Vista OS set to turn off  just the display screen at 15 mins. of inactivity.  If I try to run an Avast AV scan of my hard drive, the scan will stop when the screen goes out?
Can someone tell me why???

[DavidR]

What version of avast have you got Home or Pro ?

Well what are the rules you have set for avast to scan your computer ?

If it is related to when the computer is idle that relies on no movement of the mouse or keybord input for x seconds, so I don't know if that would have an issue of your powering down the monitor.

[180pilot]

What rules are you talking about?

I assume the screen will go off if theres no mouse or key use after my set time of 15 minutes.

[DavidR]

The important question remains unanswered what avast Home/Pro ?

The pro has more functionality and can scan when the system is idle, now I don't believe that option is available in the Home version and background scans can only be done with the screen saver option, now when you put the monitor on standby/power save the screen saver wouldn't be running, so I guess the scan if it were dependant on the screen saver running would stop.
There is a scheduled scan option in the Pro version which isn't available in the home version, there is also a work around to get a scheduled scan using ashQuick.
There are also the regular on-demand scans (with various settings) from the Simple User Interface.

So as I hope you can see the version of avast you are using is important as is the type of scan being carried out before we have a hope of trying to identify what the problem might be otherwise we would just be guessing.

That is why I asked what type of scan you are doing/rules when avast scans, etc. the settings that you set are effectively the rules governing the type of scan.

[180pilot]

Sorry,Free home version.  I don't want it to scan by itself anyway so a manual scan is all I do, not that big a problem to leave screen on while doing it, I suppose.

[DavidR]

Now what type of scan were you doing, how did you start it etc. ?

[180pilot]

Manual, hard drive only, standard.

[DavidR]

Ha Ha missed your edit by 20 seconds

OK I would have though in this case the scan should continue in the background unless you also shut down your HDDs and system into power saving mode.

Now I do a weekly manual scan, but I select Standard Sensitivity and no Archives and that on my system only a little data being scanned takes just over 12 minutes for 7.3GB of data. Now I too don't use a screen saver preferring to power down my 20.1" TFT monitor after only 5 minutes and my scan has completed when I come back.

So mine completes whilst the monitor is powered down, but before my HDDs would power down, however I believe since there is disk activity because of the scan it wouldn't power down the HDDs.

So what are your other power settings (as in my image) ?
Disable the power settings and see if it completes and how long did it take ?

[180pilot]

I don't shut off HDD ever, just the screen.
scanning both my hard drives it takes about 45 mins.

[DavidR]

I'm at a loss as to why it is happening as mine completes if the monitor powers down and since you don't power down the HDDs or go to System standby (?). With the exception of this topic I can't recall ever having seen this on the forums in just over four years on the forums.

So when you come back, and move the cursor, etc and the screen comes to life is the scan sat waiting ?

Are there any errors or warnings in the avast log viewer (right click the avast icon) relating to this, the chronological order puts new reports at the bottom of the list.

Are there any errors or warnings in the Windows Event Viewer, Application or System (the ones in the antivirus section would be in the avast log viewer) ?

If you aren't powering down the HDDs or System, why shut down the monitor when you could use the monitor power switch (that may allow it to complete) ?

XP on occasion used to have issues coming out of standby (not just the monitor) I don't use Vista so I don't know if there are any issues relating to power settings.

[180pilot]

Vista has a lot of little surprises.  Just installed SP1 and the fun begins all over.

What happens if VRDB and a virus scan run at same time?  I'm trying stopping VRDB from activating with screen saver, I don't use a screen saver, but perhaps it thinks no screen is same thing? Nothing in log viewer.

[DavidR]

I don't know if the two can happen together, I haven't heard of it happening. The VRDB is only generated once every 21 days using the screen saver generation option, so it is unlikely that the two would happen to run at the same time.

If you don't use a screen saver having selected screen saver it will never run, that is how I have mine setup and I don't use a screen saver as I prefer to run the VRDB scan manually at a time of 'my' choosing. I do weekly system maintenance and every third week I select Generate Now for the VRDB, so I know it will take about 10-11 minutes I go and get a coffee, etc. when I come it is done (for another three weeks.

With the home version there is no scheduling of scans so you have to do that manually so again there would be no way the two could run together (assuming it was allowed) as you would be manually controlling both. So that couldn't possibly be the cause of the stopped.

What about answers to the other questions we need information without answers it is guess work.

[180pilot]

The menu offers me VRDB upon screen saver, or when PC is idle, manual or none.  I now have it set to disable.

I'm not going to worry about it right now, got other issues.   I'll just leave screen up when doing weekly manual virus scans.

Just ran test with screen set to go off at one minute, started virus scan, when screen went dark, scan stopped and stayed stopped when I re-lit screen with key stroke.  No message on log file about it.

[Lisandro]

Are you sure the computer is not entering the new 'sleeping' mode?
avast scanning should be suspended just because of the screen turn off.
I can manually turn off the laptop screen and avast scanning continues...

[180pilot]

Are you sure the computer is not entering the new 'sleeping' mode?
avast scanning should be suspended just because of the screen turn off.
I can manually turn off the laptop screen and avast scanning continues...

Negative,.. nothing being turned off but screen. This behavior used to happen all the time with many programs I had using Windows 98se.  Seems somethings don't change.