At ady4um - I understand where you are coming from, but I disagree with a fair amount of your comments.
You can change the "programs" folder location to another drive, but that's for *all* programs, not just for Avast.
Somewhat. On my desktop, the default programs file is G:\Program Files and AVAST is installed there.
On the netbook, the initial default programs file was C:\Program Files. I installed the SD card as drive D, and set new programs to install to D:\Program Files, but I had to re-install a lot of my programs to D:\Program files, b/c I didn't do that originally and now the registry entries are incorrect.
From the other page, it implies that all my programs should have probably been installed to C:\SDHC\Program Files with the SD card mounted there to allow programs like AVAST to install.
I doubt the 8GB C: drive is a problem with a "normal" XP installation. Several other issues might possibly be around. For example, is that 8GB disk also partitioned ( so C: doesn't get all those 8GB)? Do you have a "Factory Restore" partition (do NOT delete it)?
There is only an 8GB partition and it is an 8GB SSD and is setup as C:\. There might be a restore folder on the C:\Drive, but there is no restore partition. There is virtually nothing on the netbook except Windows, Firefox, Microsoft Word 2003, Crap Cleaner, Powerpoint Viewer, Foxit PDF viewer - and it is basically full.
(However - I realized from the other page that there might be an i386 folder and the Windows software updates downloads folders, etc. taking up space on the drive.)
I'll try to check on restore points.
Agreed on removing the SD card causing all sorts of problems - that was never the intent, the card was purchased solely for use as basically a supplemental hard drive and removing it was never intended.
In addition, if I think about the security aspect, I would tend to think that a drive that is so clearly "removable" (even by "accident") is not the best option for a security tool.
Brings up an interesting point, though. I don't see a huge issue with AVAST being installed to the SD card - but I think I saw that the default config for AVAST was to not check removable media - so in this setup - if I installed AVAST on the C:\ SSD drive, would it not scan or check files loaded to the D:\ SD card?