toadbee,

I am not a designer of Avast, however, from what I have seen and learned about its’ workings, it uses more of a “signature comparison” for scanning rather than Checksum Hashing.
The Sensitivity control “expands” the file types that are scanned.

From a developers point of view, Hashing would prevent conflicts in coding, and therefore to some degree might be incorporated into Avast.

One of the Avast Team may clarify further.
AS for going nuts??? Try lowering the Sensitivity a bit.
:wink: