I am looking at the last scan that was done and there was memory in the items to be scanned. It is a custom scan and I have all harddisks,system drive, auto start programs, rootkits(full scan), and c:\documents and settings\user\mydocuments\* set to be scanned. Let me know if you need more info Thanks
When doing a Custom scan in which you have elected to scan Memory and that all these detections are in memory or are listings of files that can't be scanned. Since they aren't physical files they can't be moved to the chest, deleted, etc. so there is no action that can be taken, hence the Apply button being greyed out.
The detections in memory are frequently other security applications loading unencrypted virus signatures into memory. Having set off a scan of memory by an antivirus application looking for virus signatures, don't be too surprised if it finds some in memory.
So if you can give some examples of the items in the list will help us to help you.
What other security applications do you have installed ?
The pre-defined scans are more than adequate, when you consider that avast is a resident on-access antivirus, files that are a threat, present an immediate risk if infected (.exe, .com, .dll, etc.) are scanned when a) created, b) modified or c) you try to run them, then they will be scanned.
This actually lessen the need to do an on-demand scan as for the most part you would be scanning files that are otherwise dormant or they would already have been scanned by the file system shield.
I do a weekly Quick scan and a monthly Full System scan, no custom scan, no archives (they are inert until you extract and try to run the files).