avast stubbornly refused to be relegated to an on demand scanner

[fanfor]

avast 4.8 free, windows xp prof; after installation it came into system tray and in startup;

so i unchecked it from startup via msconfig, applied, etc ... rebooted ... that stubborn little sucker didn't know its place and kept coming back at
startup and of course in system tray; repeated the process in case it was a slow learner; still the same problem

there was nothing in the settings to have it as an on demand, or secondary, virus scanner

so i dumped it pronto and had to go into the system and clean out the detritus left by the poor uninstall: regedit,windows prefetch, program file

pity it was such a pest, otherwise i would've kept it

[DavidR]

avast is designed to be a resident on-access scanner not an on-demand scanner. That is why there is nothing in the settings to have it as an on-demand scanner.

Having two resident scanners installed is not recommended as rather than provide twice the protection it can cause conflicts that could leave you more vulnerable. Simply disabling isn't enough as resident scanners load low level device drivers.

If you had problems with the uninstall, then there is another tool to use.
Download the avast! Uninstall Utility, find it here and save it to your HDD. It would be pest to have run that from safe mode as avast doesn't run in safe mode.

[fanfor]

i didn't expect, nor come across any notice, that avast had crippled its wider acceptance by eschewing its utility as an on-demand scanner ... it's an atypical attitude, especially if if seeks wider acceptance, because it's a common practice to use several scanners on some downloaded material, one being the live scanner and the other(s) being supplementary scanner(s), and it'd typically be expected to prove itself superior before becoming the primary scanner

anyhow, thanks for your reply

maybe such a feature might be relatively easily incorporated into the software  [ i'm not knowledgeable about such matters ] if avast is interested in gaining wider acceptance

i was aware that it's not desirable to have more than one anti virus scanner operating at the same time, for the reason you mentioned

i thank you for your helpful reply
 

[DavidR]

avast has pretty wide spread acceptance, but that acceptance is as a resident antivirus.

There are only a few AVs that are designed to run as on-demand only with no services or low level drivers. I don't know how easy or otherwise it would be for Alwil Software to have an on-demand only version as I'm only an avast user, but their decision so far is to go for the Resident on-access protection.

[Lisandro]

that avast had crippled its wider acceptance by eschewing its utility as an on-demand scanner ... it's an atypical attitude

Why? Why should be avast design to be only on-demand?

especially if if seeks wider acceptance, because it's a common practice to use several scanners on some downloaded material, one being the live scanner and the other(s) being supplementary scanner(s), and it'd typically be expected to prove itself superior before becoming the primary scanner

Use the best scanner as the resident

[fanfor]

tech, i'd originally assumed that avast was designed for both uses, as a resident scanner, and as an on-demand one, however, as i found out, such was not the case

with that in mind, i thought avast would gain wider acceptance if an on-demand capability was added, for the reasons stated

on rereading my comments, i realized that i hadn't made such clear; thank you for seeking clarification; regards

[Tarq57]

In case you're interested, good demand scanners include MBAM, Superantispyware, DrWeb's Cureit (not up-datable, re-download the .exe when needed) to name a few. (Some others= Spybot, Asquared, AVZ4, WinClam...apart from Clam, they are antimalware rather than antivirus scanners, but there is a lot of function overlap, these days.)
I've read about various means used to have two AV's designed to be resident forced into passive (demand) behaviour..some users appear to have success with Avira in this regard, by not installing the guard. It's a workaround, though, and not guaranteed.

AFAIK the larger demand is for users wanting resident protection, rather than the demand scanner market, which appears fairly well served.

[Lisandro]

I think avast could be installed without the standard shield (resident). I'm not sure as I'm on avast 5 beta and not avast 4 anymore.

[YoKenny]

I think avast could be installed without the standard shield (resident). I'm not sure as I'm on avast 5 beta and not avast 4 anymore.

That's an interesting proposition.

Who was it that said Don't surf in the nude?