When I turned my computer on...

[Logonogonogoner]

I was curious if this was normal. During class, I was using my laptop for awhile, the battery was not dead, and still had at least a little life left in it. At the end of class I hit standby and immediately closed it. Upon arriving back to my dorms I found my computer on and running, and when I opened my laptop it was doing what I believe to be a boot scan. Is this normal?

[scythe944]

Not unless you just installed avast, or you scheduled it yourself.

[Logonogonogoner]

Ah. Well I do not believe I scheduled anything...Is there any way to check that? Sorry if I sound ignorant. I am not the best with computers. And I really do not know why it was doing that. O_o

[scythe944]

Here is how you enable it: http://support.avast.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=160\

As for checking whether it has been enabled or not, I don't know.  I assume it's either in the registry somewhere, or the avast4.ini file, but I couldn't find the setting.

[Logonogonogoner]

Hm...so when you schedule a boot scan is it only once? Or does it do it at that time every time?

[scythe944]

Oh, if it keeps scanning on boot every time, it could be because something is blocking access to the registry.  

If I remember correctly, Spybot will prevent registry access and prevent avast from clearing the setting after it runs the first time, so it keeps trying to do a boot-time scan every time you boot.

*No, it's only supposed to run once, after you tell it to.  If it keeps doing it, read above*

[Logonogonogoner]

Actually, after looking, I still have that option available, so I guess I haven't used it yet

Is there anything else that would be going on? I mean it was a bluish screen with the avast thing, scanning files :\ Could that have to do with the VRDB thing? :\ Sorry to be bothersome, I just cannot afford to have my computer messed up...

[scythe944]

No, the option to do a boot-time scan will always be available.  You can run it at any time.  However, it SHOULD only run the one time, then it won't run again until you schedule it to happen again.

It definitely sounds like the boot scan was running.  It won't screw your computer up, but it's a nuisance if you don't need it to run.

Again, if you have Spybot S&D installed on your computer, or some other program that prevents changes to the registry, it might be preventing avast from turning the boot-time scan off.

We need to figure out what program is doing it.

So again, do you have Spybot S&D on your computer?  Any other security software?

[scythe944]

Ahh... finally found that old topic.

Here, this might help: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=43006.0

or this: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=43711.0

[Logonogonogoner]

Nothing that I can see. It remember thinking about doing one the other day, with the huge Win32-your-computer-is-a-virus scare but I do not believe that I did. :\