I’ve been a paying customer for years and am paid up through 2015, but I’m getting so frustrated with DeepScreen that I’m just about ready to uninstall Avast entirely.
I’m appending the details, which I’ve posted in an answer here:
http://superuser.com/a/791578/311598
DeepScreen interferes with normal program execution–it doesn’t just delay it. It’s especially bad if you have Avast set to Silent/gaming mode because then you can get unexpected/bizarre behavior and have no idea why. (I spent an entire day debugging the installer for a program I’m developing because it suddenly started running twice every single time I launched it–DeepScreen is very forgetful–and only succeeding on the the second run.)
Going under Settings, Update, Details, you can turn off popups for the majority of them–the annoying update-related popups, which should make it easier to work undisturbed, play video games, etc. But DeepScreen popups still pop up!
CANNOT DISABLE DEEPSCREEN: I’ve tried disabling DeepScreen entirely (under Settings, Antivirus), since it’s so disruptive, but this checkbox appears to have no effect.
Unfortunately, the only way I currently have of disabling DeepScreen (in Avast 2014.9.0.2021) is to disable all shields! And I’m not even sure that this is working, since I sometimes get DeepScreen popups even with all shields disabled. Avast can’t be prevented from starting with Windows during boot, so maybe uninstalling Avast is the only solution.