when screen saver kicks in, Avast starts scanning

[DavidR]

There are several indexing function in the windows OS and in MS Office, these are supposedly to help speed up searches by indexing your files and in the case of office your documents. Personally I think they are a waste of space.

I have long since disabled the Windows Indexing service, if you have a look at the properties of each partition of hard disk you will see something like Allow Indexing Service to index this disk, uncheck that option, see image.

MS Office used to have something like FastFind which I also disabled, that was a very long time ago and I haven't upgraded from Office 97 Small Business Edition, I simply didn't need the bells and whistles and if I ever do update it, then it will be something like OpenOffice.

So you will need to have a search on the windows Help and Support function (from the Windows Start button) or MS Office or Word Help to see how to disable any fastfind/indexing function.

P.S. you won't get this sort of help with any other AV (especially for unrelated issues) and avast by comparison is lighter on resources and highly configurable.

[nomad47]

I have reinstalled Avast. The laptop is up to its old tricks. For all I know, this could be a normal part of Windoze XP SP2. After all, when the screen saver is on on my other computers, I'm not in the room. This is the only computer where I'm in the room when the screen saver is on. I'll have to have a peek at the others when the screen saver is on.

I give up on this thing. Some day, when I feel industrious, I may just format the damned thing and restore. I don't know what else to do.

Thanks for all your help.

nomad47

[DavidR]

You're welcome, I hate mysteries too.