More on PC Tools firewall
An issue that I have reported on their forums is that if I have the slider for Enhanced Security Permissions set to High, on first access of nearly every program, it hangs up for at least 30 seconds and then an alert pops up saying that the app was temporarily allowed because it locked the screen preventing alerts from being displayed. It then asks if the program should be trusted. This does not happen if the slider is set to Medium or Low. It's very annoying if you're trying to install something new or even uninstall something old and it locks up like that a few times during the process. It has already happened to me. Of course, once the app is trusted, the issue never comes up again. I may have to keep the slider on Medium since it says that the Low setting provides only connection monitoring and none of the other security features. Actually, the Low setting may be all that I need. It's an improvement over the older version though. That one would not only lock the screen, it would lock up the entire system necessitating a hard reboot from the Power Button. If I disabled Avast during first access of apps, the lockups did not occur. The two programs could not be running at the same time for first access of programs. The issue in the new version is an improvement but still a hassle and disabling Avast has no effect.
I have excluded the PcTools Folder in the fileshield and every one of the executables in the Behavior Shield of Avast to no avail. There is no way to exclude things in PC Tools.
