after i scan the window comes up and for some of the listings it says
can not scan password protected
I have never had a password associated with my lavasoft SE Personal
what should i know?
Add Lavasoft skin into exclusion list. (avast Program Settings > Exclusion > Browse…)
Welcome to the forums, Rooooooookie. 
Many programs, such as lavasoft, password protect their files to prevent them from being tampered with. This is not a password you selected. There are probably other programs that gave you this same type of message. Almost any security program will password protect their own files. This is normal.
Beside what others have said:
Many programs (usually security based ones) password protect their files for legitimate reasons such as AdAware and Spybot Search & Destroy, there are others (and avast doesn’t know the password or have any way of using it even if it did know it).
When you run scans with the above programs and you delete harmful entries that they detect, a copy is kept (in quarantine/restore/backup) in case you need to reverse what you did. These are usually password protected, you should do some housekeeping and delete old backup/recovery/quarantine entries (older than two weeks or so), this will reduce the numbers of files that can’t be scanned. So in your case some house keeping could reduce the numbers returned as password protected.
By examining 1) the reason given by avast! for not being able to scan the files, 2) the location of the files, you can get an idea of what program they relate to. You may need to expand the column headings to see all the text.
Files that can’t be scanned are just that, not an indication they are suspicious/infected, just unable to be scanned.