I have Windows 7 Pro x64 and the latest version of avast! Home (5.0.594) and I am using Soluto to monitor my boot performance. I have a Dell Studio 14z laptop, for which Dell hasn’t released new video drivers in about a year, so I went to http://laptopvideo2go.com and downloaded this OEM driver for my nVidia GeForce 9400M G. The driver is WHQL certified, but since I had to use a modified .inf to allow the driver to install, it is not digitally signed.
Before I installed this driver, Soluto reported avast! as taking about 6 seconds to load in my boot. Shortly after installing the driver, I noticed my boot taking longer than normal, so I checked Soluto again. Now, avast!'s reported load time is 12 seconds. Now, I realize that correlation does not equal causation, but Avast seems to be loading slower because of this new driver. The driver seems to be working without a problem, so I don’t believe it is misconfigured.
Does Avast do any special scanning of unsigned drivers on startup (or any other time) and if so, can I set an exception so that it will not scan my graphics driver?