confirming the "ask mode" issue with the firewall >>> alert popups are freezing, i.e. you can't allow or deny, just close the popup and switch back to auto-decide to start the program. No issue in auto-decide mode.
edit: unrelated, the only problem with the manual scan popup, if you didn't make it sticky and if there was another alert (of any kind) in the meantime, you can't get it back (the scan popup), and there's still nothing saying in systray that a scan is running...
edit: Win7 taskbar button from Avast when minimized shows progress of manual scan, nice