Does anyone still use McAfee? Last I heard of it, it utterly destroyed the windows installation of almost every single one of their clients.
Like I said, I left McAfee about 5 years ago and I was running VirusScan-7… which was about 2 yrs old then, but still supported. It was the last good version IMHO. I was a moderator for their help forum for about 4 years. Another forum mod suggested we look at avast. That’s why I came here… or to avast.
I agree, Avast 7 has really turned me off.
Unless it’s fixed right, I’m done when my subscription is up.
What an over bloated hunk of junk, and it was so good until 7 came along.
Ron
Thanks Bob.
Uninstalled version 7, cleaned my registry and re-installed 6.0.1367.0. Turned off auto sandbox and automatic program update.
Re-installed graphics program since sandbox deleted some required associated files. Now I can open a file in the graphics program without sandbox starting automatically.
Gonna start looking for a new AVP since I suspect, from my experience, it will be just a matter of time before virus definitions will not be able to be updated unless the latest program version is downloaded and installed.
What was a great program is now becoming 2nd rate. The auto sandbox should be able to be turned off in the free version just like any of the shields. Its thats simple.
Thanks for the link to his comment, which allowed me to read yours and a couple of others.
I take it you’ve tried and can’t pull that off via the autosandbox exclusion list (?)
Yes I can but it’s much more of a hassle doing so than it was before with v6. I can see it getting harder if what VLK said becomes a reality.
You’re welcome but Installing version 6 isn’t something I’m even thinking about. There are so many improvements in avast!7 that I would never go back.
There may be a few bugs that still have to be worked out but that will all happen sooner than later. 
Thanks for all the replies and response. By the amount of posts on V7 I’m sure Avast will sort this out as soon as possible…
For the record: Disabling the Sandbox did not work! It still reports, alerts and crashes - every single time. Even disabling ALL realtime shiels, sandbox, adding exclusion paths and executables did not seem to make a single difference - hence the huge amount of time spend (wasted) on this subject.
And that explains my (I’ll admit: a perhaps somewhat) aggressive choice of topic title: spending 5 hours + on getting a virus ‘killer’ to work - is more time than it costs me to fully re-install a workstation after it has been trashed by a virus 
Anyway, I hope Avast learned a lesson on this one - as a developer, I know we all make mistakes. But Avast should realize (all the way to the top!) that you can only break the trust with a user ONCE…
Good luck to all of us…
Danny.