I wish to have the Smart Scan only scan for viruses. In settings, I clicked on “Troubleshooting” and then “Open old settings”. In the “General” section, scrolling down to the Smart Scan section, and clicking on the drop down arrow shows 4 selection sliders. I’ve left the top one, “scan for viruses” green with the check mark, and changed the other 3 to red with the “x” mark. Then I’ve checked the green “OK” square button at the bottom. Nontheless, when I run a smart scan, all 4 default components of the smart scan continue to run. Am I doing something wrong or is this a bug? I’m using the latest version (19.3.2369) on a Win 10 Home (64bit) operating system.
Did you reboot after making your changes to Smart Scan?
Yes I did, but thanks for the suggestion.
Attached below will show the four default scan settings for Smart Scan highlighted. Fifth one is optional. It is there for testing purposes.
Since you’ve already deselected 3 of the 4 scan options, suggest you go a little further and modify selected features from their default ‘on’ settings to ‘off’ by clicking the Modify box. See the second attached picture on how to do this.
One caveat: There have been a few posts of users not wishing avast to scan their sensitive data even it is a paid for feature, and all reporting this scanning option is not removed from Smart Scan even after using the ‘Modify’ button.
One way to get to what you want is to strip Avast down to the bare-bones and select real-time scanning, webshield scanning, and behavior shield only.
Reboot when done to finalize your changes.
In my opinion, only two of the four default Smart Scans should be run manually once in a while: Vulnerable Software and Network Threats.
The other remaining ones are taken care of by real-time process or file access and manually removing all sensitive data documents or information from your system and storing it in a safe place (Virus Scan and Sensitive Data)
Just to add, the Sensitive Data Scan results will always appear.
There isn’t at present any way to turn it off or delete the component.
Mchain and Bob3160, thanks for your additional suggestions and comments. I failed to mention in my initial post that I’m using Free Avast Antivirus, not the paid version. Perhaps that is related to the apparent problem between the “old settings” GUI and the ability to customize the modules used during the Smart Scan (however, all other aspects of making changes to various settings seem to produce the desired effects). Using the Modify button, I removed 3 modules from the suite of options (the two browser extensions and the do not disturb mode). I rebooted. The old settings still showed that I had “x”'ed out 3 of the four default modules for the Smart Scan and running that scan still loaded and ran all 4. I tried using the “Repair” button and again rebooted, no changes.
Well, welcome as a new user of avast. I don’t believe your inability to customize Smart Scan just the way you’d like it is a bug.
Over the years Avast has lost some of the customization it was famous for since the early 2000’s. Things like voice announcements, pirate voice, etc,., are all gone, but I would be remiss if I should not point out the basic core strength of protecting your system from harm is, in many ways, better since then.
Since it doesn’t work the way I want, I don’t run it unless I’m helping a forum member such as yourself to help diagnose issues with it.
Actually, I’m not exactly a new user. I’ve been using Avast Free Antivirus for about 3 years now. However, only recently did that issue with the Smart Scan get under my skin. Maybe I have too much free time on my hands! Otherwise, I’m quite satisfied with the product and have no intention of abandoning it. I’ll just live with the relatively long time it takes to complete all 4 default modules of the Smart Scan when all I’m really interested in when I run it manually is the virus scan module. Thanks again for your suggestions and comments.
You can always simply cancel the scan once the virus check portion completes.
It turns green when it’s finished that scan without problems.
If it finds something, you may want to wait till the end.
Good point! Actually, I’ve been doing that recently but for the sake of brevity, failed to mention it in preceeding posts.