OK, against my better judgement I have run some tests, but I don’t think it is testing avast in any way.

  1. changed the windows “Launching applications and unsafe files” to disabled and left scanWhenDone at false. Downloaded the free avast version 54MB done in seconds.

  2. windows “Launching applications and unsafe files” on disabled and changed scanWhenDone to true. Attempted to downloaded the free avast version 54MB twice. It was cancelled both times.

  3. changed the windows “Launching applications and unsafe files” to prompt again and left scanWhenDone at true. Downloaded the free avast version 54MB download appeared to start (unlike 2 above where nothing happened) but was extremely slow, I stopped and deleted the attempt.

  4. Everything back to what I had on 1 above. Windows “Launching applications and unsafe files” to prompt and scanWhenDone at false. Downloaded the free avast version 54MB again done in done in seconds.

All I’m seeing is an issue with firefox and windows security settings (overly strict custom settings perhaps) and firefox not being able to initiate an avast scan when done, which I knew about prior to this. The file scanned by the file system shield (newly created file) when the download completed and not initiated by firefox, which would/should have used ashquick.exe as a command line scanner.