I have the same problem with Avast. It runs almost constantly for the first 30 minutes or more when we start windows, and again when someone else logons (windows xp/sp2 home edition; avast 4.7 home edition). We do not use utorrent; firewall is zonealarm free edition. I was thinking to uninstall and reinstall from scratch, to get the database reorganized; would that do any good?