I don’t want avast to be running when the windows starts. At all. There’s no option to “quit” or “shut down” or “exit” on the task panel or the gui. When I try to end the process with task manager it says “access denied”
I’ve read a few similar topics on here, and the responses were very surprising. things like
“why would you want to close avast?”
“it doesn’t take any memory”
“you’ll be prone to attacks HURR DURR”
I just want to be able to stop it from running. I hope you don’t ask me “why would you want to close avast?”…Please
What Pondus answered is correct (not that he needs some confirmation from anyone). In your post, you are asking for 3 different things.
One is how avast can be disabled “at all”, meaning avast should not start at all when booting the system.
The other one could be how to start avast, but not right away with the start-up items, when Windows is just booting the system. Meaning, have avast start, but only after some delay.
The third one is to have the possibility to stop avast from protecting the system, temporarily. Avast would start as normally should, but you want to “pause” it, for whatever reason.
So when people ask you “why”, is to clarify the final goal / need, so to provide you with the adequate answer, if they know it.
All this doesn’t mean someone is actually recommending you the procedure, but only to answer to your technical question.
As Asyn asked Why ???
My question is why did you install it in the first place ???
If you really want to close the service, simply uninstall avast!. :o
avast! is meant to protect you. Turning it off, would stop your protection.
Although this is not what is supposed to happen with avast, you have 2 alternatives.
The evident, and more natural, as already mentioned, if you don’t want resident protection, uninstall avast. Other non-resident antivirus were already suggested in the posts above.
The other possibility, not recommended but so you can have your answer, would be to disable:
The defense module is a setting in avast. Shields can be permanently turned off too. About the service and the driver, they are part of autostartup methods, which you would need to change accordingly.
There might be other parts of avast to disable, as the firewall for example, depending on the edition you are using.
If you don’t know how to perform each of those actions, then simply uninstall avast.
To be perfectly clear, I am not recommending any of those actions. I am just answering to your technical question.