Hi,
I run the following: Avast 4.8.1296 home on my Vista PC.
I can’t seem to figure out why the “a” in the blue ball systray icon spins constantly, incessantly. I have all but the Outlook/Exchange “provider” active. I’m not actively surfing website (just typing in gmail mostly).
There doesn’t seem to be a way to “see” what Avast is doing when it’s spinning. I don’t know which provider is doing something which makes the fact that it IS doing something even more troublesome.
I open the console and see that it doesn’t seem to be actively running any type of scheduled scan.
If you right click on the icon and go to “On Access Protection Control” each provider will give you a scanned count and show you what it has most recently scanned.
Some services or programs running in background invoke the Standard Shield scanning, for instance.
You need to see which provider is being used and scanning.
This issue came up recently with some of my Vista users.
Microsoft has a habit of including features that are running all the time and that, without the avast icon, you might be unaware of. Included in this is the continual scanning that Vista performs to support the enhanced Search functions in Vista (rather like the old Indexing function in windows XP).
avast does not go out and scan of its own accord - it is responding to what the system is doing.
If you want to see what avast is scanning (for a short time since it will get irritating) you can - in the Standard Shield:
Standard Shield > Customize > Advanced tab > check the box “Show detailed info on performed action” > OK
You will see popups telling you what is being scanned. You can turn it off by unchecking the box.
A couple of my Vista users have decided to turn off the animation of the icon (avast Program Setting > Appearance) since they find the frequency of its rotation distracting.