Actully, Technical was right (as usual :)).
avast! matches the exclusions as ‘text’ - i.e. “c:\program files” is different from “c:\progra~1”. And, the other application may use both to access/start a file.

Lars-Erik, if I remember correctly, you were using Win98SE - is it still the case? I’m sort of surprised to hear that ZoneAlarm would have conflicts with avast! both on Win98 and WinXP (which is what Technical is using, right?).