Any way to programmatically disable on-access protection?

[Rebeccah]

No flames, please, I think I know the answer but want it to be different, so I am asking.

I want to set up automatic backup of my laptop, but I have some old files that are known to contain viruses - I used to work for an antivirus company, and have samples as standalone files, and some embedded into e-mail database files.  As things are now, if I run a hard drive backup, Avast! will alert in the middle and I have to manually tell it to ignore each of the  affected files.  Eventually, I get smart and remember to manually disable the on-access protection, and then I have to remember to enable it again afterwards.

The problem is, I really don't want to be doing backups while I'm doing other things with my computer, and because I don't currently have them scheduled to run automatically, I don't back up very often.  I want to schedule an automatic backup with a pre-processing command to disable on-access protection and a post-processing command to re-enable it again.  I do realize that this is kind of anathema to the idea of the antivirus software's being able to protect itself against malware, but is there any way to accomplish it?  I have the Avast! free (registered) Home edition, version 4.8

Thanks,

Rebeccah

[scythe944]

Maybe you could put all of the known virus files in one place (if possible) then add that location (or locations if you have to) to the exclusion list in avast?

[Rebeccah]

Maybe you could put all of the known virus files in one place (if possible) then add that location (or locations if you have to) to the exclusion list in avast?

Well, moving them all to a single location won't work, because most of them are from e-mails and are scattered among Forte Agent e-mail database files.  At some point I think I need to let go of my previous job and let Avast! quarantine them.  Then, I suppose the warnings would go away.

Rebeccah