David, thank you for your post.
I think you are missing my point.
First, about the exclude list. It's not that I don't want to write the whole path. The only reason I mentioned the whole antivirus utilities issue is because this behavior brought my attention to the change in Avast 4.8.1351 I'm really interested about. So forget about it, at least for now.
Second, I understand about setting Avast to High, as oppose to Normal scanning. I didn't change those settings. They are the same now, while using 4.8.1351, than before with 4.8.1335 version. BTW, I use High scan mode. But again,*I* didn't change those settings. So, for the purpose of this discussion, this has nothing to do with my questions.
Now, either
A) *the update* to 4.8.1351 did change some Avast setting (not the user), or,
B) sth in the way Avast scans (heuristics or sth similar) was changed, or,
C) the way Avast reports those issues, or,
D) some combination of the above possibilities.
My suspicion is that all this has nothing to do with Vista, so if any other user is using XP or any Windows version, this changed behavior might be happening there too.
There is a "simple" way to test all this. Just having a system with a previous Avast version, like 4.8.1335 or 4.8.1229, setting all Avast providers to High, and saving the test EICAR file somewhere inside a zip file. Then, making a search of any filename you want (it doesn't matter), while including as a search location the folder where the zipped EICAR test file is saved, and including non-indexed files in the search. Also, the search options should include searching inside zip's and cab's.
Performing the same procedure but with Avast 4.8.1351 and comparing between both behaviors, should give a clue whether there is some change related to this issue or not.
Although it is not a complex test, I don't have enough resources to perform it. If any Dev would be so kind to check this issue, I think it even be worthy in relation to the next Avast 5.0, since the current 1351 version was released to improve compatibility to perform the update when 5.0 will be available. Anyone would want complaints about Avast 5.0 interfering with previously-simple tasks?
If I perform a simple search over my whole HDD, and Avast is scanning each and every file evaluated by the search, and assuming that previous versions were behaving differently, then general performance *will* be punished.
I just want to be sure this changed is necessary for better security, and not a useless waste of performance.
Thank you in advance.