how do you turn it off?

is there a way not to load things at startup? i just want to open avast to scan what i need then close it without anything else running, can this be done?

right-click the ‘a’ icon in the system tray…there’s options to disable the resident shield…but i don’t really recommend it…anyway…welcome to avast forums!

Why do you want to do so?
Do you use any other antivirus?
Which is your Standard Shield level? High or Normal?
Normal is the best balance between performance and protection.

i just want to open avast to scan what i need then close it without anything else running
Welcome to the forum. I'm alittle confused but why did you install a resident anti virus program like avast! ??? Sounds to me that what your looking for is something like [url=http://www.clamwin.com/][b]ClamAV[/b][/url]

Like the rest of the posters, I don’t recommend being with any resident virus protection.