Is their any option to set an application to be safe so that avast doesn’t scan all the files or handles associated with that application…?
I am using Visual Studio and every time all the files opened by it are scanned, while compiling it takes lot of time with Avast enabled. when avast is disabled than the whole application runs smoothly and quite fast…
I have seen the option to add paths that avast won’t scan, but then Visual studio opens file various places… 
Except for Instant Messaging & P2P providers avast does not know an application from a hole in the road. avast mainly works by scanning standard actions (accessing files, accessing port 80 via http, sending/receiving email via standard email ports). This is what reduces the overheads of avast and makes it work so well with all applications (they all have to do the standard things) and be quite light in system overhead.
So, the simple answer to your question is no, avast cannot recognize the access by application.
I very much doubt that your experience of overhead is on all of the paths used by Visual Studio. The main issue id going to be the overhead from very large files or (perhaps more likely) from files accessed very frequently. You can turn on detailed information about the files accessed by standard shield
Standard Shield > Customize > Advanced tab > Show detailed info on performed action
(just for a while) to show you the files it is scanning. Then you could selectively exclude the most frequent files and see how the overhead goes.
Why don’t you just exclude the extension of the Visual Studio files…?
Also, you can set Standard Shield to Custom level, unchecking the option for scanning open/modified/created files.
I don’t doubt his experience at all - in fact, it is an experience shared by me and all of the other developers I know who use avast with visual studio.
For the original poster, the advice of watching what is scans is good advice, because you’re going to have to exclude a ton of stuff. Starting with your projects directory, then the \microsoft.net directory as well as the assemblies directory, any iis virtual paths that you’re using as well as the directory where .net 2.0 puts the shadow files and precompiled iis files, etc.
Once you finally exclude most of those things, performance should return to normal. Or you could do what I ended up doing, disabling avast when I’m coding and avoiding suspicious internet sites while it’s off. I turn it back on when I’m done.
Hmm… should be other solution… disabling the antivirus is not a good thing.
Any info from Alwil team? Igor?
Yeah, Any other solution would be really encouraged. I just want to set the rule “File accesses by certain program(say dexplore.exe) needn’t be scanned, so i am setting it to be trusted application”.
Though Lately I have removed the project directory path and Many othe paths commonly accessed BY Visual Studio. But if there is way setting a Application as trusted app than it would the reduce the cumbersome process of checking paths and than storing it.
I don’t think this is available for Standard Shield.