No, for sure not. There isn’t any reason to disable the antivirus while installing whatever you want…
Despite saying I intend to not to waste any more time, for your education as you said/quoted.
"Is there a way to shutdown AVAST entirely? When I stop all of the avast services it still leaves ashDisp.exe running."
This indicates to me that the original poster Adam had successfully stopped the avast services.
For your further education the ashDisp.exe is the avast icon and plays no part in the avast protection, it merely acts as the link to the GUI and Providers (which are dead as the Adam had stopped the services).
As one of the avast developers I think his knowledge of avast and why it shouldn’t need to be disabled to install a program, is far from blind. I would have to wonder what it is that, that program does that it doesn’t want your anti-virus running to get involved in, what is it hiding.
I have had avast installed for a little over 5 years and never had to stop avast to install another program, if a program insists I disable my AV, I do want to know why and don’t just take their word for it. If they can’t give a reasonable and valid reason the application is history, it won’t get installed.
Also I was going to stop wasting my time, but had to attach these images. Before and after stopping Avast on access scanner. Few lines disappeares but not enough.
So http://www.nuance.com/imaging/paperport/paperport-professional.asp this is very dangerous application and no one who uses avast shoud not use it? right.
I don’t know why those processes are on the list but I like to stop them all. There is ignore option also, but then something might go wrong with installation.
If there is a way to stop remaining ones without taking self defence off and using task manager, feel free to advise.
Sorry for trollish language, but I just can’t understand why it’s so hard just tell the steps to temporarily kill avast…
I would press the “Ignore” Button…
But I’m no specialist :-\
Don’t think that there should be any problems…
Probably it would work, but if I like to kill apps on my computer, I should have rights and measures to do so. If someone else would not, it’s he’s/her’s decision. I don’t like to be questioned and ignored when I hit facts on the table. And that’s what happened here…
Hmm… I find it interesting that there are also Firefox, Outlook and PowerDVD on the list…
But I’m afraid, I can’t really help you.
I don’t know any other way than the one you described with disabling self-defense and killing the services manually…
yeah, list is quite weird but that’s the way it is. Anyway problem solved and issue pointed out.
DISCLAIMER: My situation is apples to this post’s orange installation software issue. But the post helped me so…
I had to register and reply for this situation because you ALL are correct here. You should NOT need to stop the system and yet the answer provided by veepee78 solves an issue – one I had as well.
My company uses avast Server Edition and love it. I needed to change the email address that receives virus database update notifications. I couldn’t make the change in the control panel and enhanced control panel. (I tried. I clicked Alerts > SMTP among other options to get to that address to no avail. Clicking the SMTP button in the Alerts tab does nothing. Perhaps it shouldn’t. You certainly can provide a different solution. I don’t mind a better way.) Anyway, I’ve heard I could uninstall/reinstall avast in order to update this entry. Didn’t like that option nor believed it was the only option. Found several posts on here dictating where the avast4.ini file exists and its many tokens. Tried to edit the SMTPLogTo token and hit save but the file was in use. (Duh!) I tried to stop the providers and save: same issue. Lurked more in the forums and found a post where someone suggested to stop all services in the MMC Services panel. I did and found that the aswDisp.exe file was still open and that I could not stop it in the Task Manager. “Access Denied!” Fair enough.
Enter this post. I agree with you that avast need not be stopped. But I still needed an answer to help find a logical solution and relay the message here for future development purposes, if any. So I followed veepee78’s one-step solution (with all services stopped) and it didn’t work. But heck, nothing worked when I stopped the services in services.msc. (This is where the evangelists and tech support are correct. You shouldn’t need to stop it and stopping it may cause more factors.) So I started the services back up and un-did veepee78’s solution. The avast4.ini file is still in use and I’m still out of luck. Lastly, I re-instated veepee78’s solution (which is an avast feature, meaning it was put in there for a reason by the devs). I could save the file. Success! Of course, I unchecked the checkbox right afterwards to be sure.
After that, I tried one more time to make an edit to the ini file and hit save. Once again, file was in use. So that completes my observation. I hope that helps others and that the responders in the forum keep providing solutions regardless of conflict. Conflict brings correction through compassion and compromise.
The quick and dirty…
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You should NOT need to stop the services for any reason. You may have to stop the providers on extreme cases.
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You can check the “Disable avast! self-defense module” in the Troubleshooting section of Settings… on extreme cases. But this is a troubleshooting “feature” that should be unchecked after you evaluate your situation.
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When all else fails, the tech support, evangelists, and community are not the enemy. Try to post your issues (and responses) without slander, sarcasm, or the like. All thought should be welcome if it is removed of commentary. Otherwise, it only expands the thread with many tangents.
i ran avast once, don’t like how it operated. it’s that simple. i want to get rid of it. to delete it, i need to shut it down first. same problem as everyone else–the quit button has been disabled. there really should’ve been a disclaimer, b/c this is ridiculous. all these people want to shut it off, so they should be able to shut it off and/or get rid of it, and it shouldn’t be difficult to do.
the fact that these avast “enthusiasts” have such a roundabout way of answering questions, and because i’ve read where it literally took several attempts to get the answer the user wanted, makes me feel that avast is a shady program. i’m the user–did you or did you not make it for the user? therefore i should be able to uninstall it easily if i so desire.
i finally shut down avast and when i went into the system, found it and sent it to the trash, it refused to delete. it says it can’t–com.avast.MacAvast.MAD is in use. WHY is this part of it in use? i want to shut the whole thing down and get rid of it. i don’t want and don’t need restrictions put on me and would rather use some other antivirus that doesn’t give me such problems shutting it down or deleting it if i don’t like it!! have some respect, avast-makers.
If you didn’t like it the uninstall is your course of action.
If you want to shut it down temporarily, our concerns in asking why is to ensure that the user remains protected. Many programs suggest shutting down your AV before you install them and that frankly is crazy, the time you most want your AV running is when installing applications.
If it isn’t for a temporary reason, but to try and use it for on-demand scans only then simply shutting down the resident functions isn’t enough. avast is designed as a resident on-access scanner so it also starts low level drivers to be able to act early enough to prevent files executing before being scanned.
To try to stop these low level drivers from running, there is no GUI option (as we said it is designed to be on-access)
I can’t speak of your experiences of the removal of the Unix/Linux/Mac version of avast as I have never used it.
It would have best been addressed in the specific forum relating to the Unix/Linux/Mac version of avast, which is totally different to the Windows version (as it isn’t resident I believe), where the points above relate to the windows version and no doubt other topics you have read.
DavidR,
Just wanted to acknowledge your remarkable restraint and dignified response in the face of totally unwarranted provocation.
It always pays to be polite, more so when you are under fire… and you have so admirably demonstrated this old-school principle.
This forum (and it is a whole education in here) will always remain a popular place with more people like you… and thankfully, there are quite a few.
~cheers! to all the evangelists. your stock just rose. 
I stumbled upon this thread via google because Avast was keeping me from cleaning up my start up programs. I used Startup Inspector to do this and it was not functioning properly while avast was running, even if avast was ‘paused’. Avast was not allowing Startup inspector to apply any changes to the start up list while Avast was running. I kept getting an error message when trying to make the changes that said that it could not make any changes and said something about avast. I do no recall the exact error message and did not write it down unfortunately. I did try stopping all the various avast modules and that did not work. I then tried to kill its processess to no avail. It was at that point that I found this thread.
I did what veepee78 suggested, turn off Avast’s self protection and then killed avast completely. Startup Inspector then could apply any changes I wanted and now I’ve returned Avast to its original state. I wonder if it might have worked by only disabling the self protect. I did not think to try that at the time. I thought I’d pass this on for anyone that may care. I also would argue it is not unreasonable as a computer user/owner to expect an easier way to shut down any software, regardless of what my reason may be.
The avast self-defence module should only protect avast’s files, registry entries, startup items, etc.
It doesn’t effect other startup entries. The only startup item if we’re talking msconfig type startup items, then the ashDisp.exe (avast tray icon) is the only user startup item.
I’m sure you are right but that did happen. I consistently received an error message whenever I tried to apply any changes and the message indicated that avast was the problem. Only after I killed avast could I commit any changes. I can’t explain why this happened (I’m not sure) but it did indeed happen and Avast, as best I can tell, certainly played a role in the problem.
How about this:
Some of us have older PCs on which we sometimes require the freedom to shut down certain running processes in order to conserve system resources. In addition, some of us are musicians who sometimes like to disconnect from the 'net, shut down some processes and record our instruments. Then there are gamers, etc. Right now my task manager is telling me that Avastsvc.exe is sucking up about 28,728K. “Silent/ Gaming Mode” does nothing whatsoever to alter this, AFAICS. Disabling the shields actually increased usage. For people like us, it is extremely frustrating to have an otherwise great program like Avast making nazi-like decisions for us, as to which programs we can & cannot shut down when we need to. EVERY INSTALLED PROGRAM should provide an option to temporarily disable (meaning to actually disable) or close the program, or to at least allow this to be accomplished from the task manager.
Fire away, evangelists!
Welcome to the forums, Tangento
Your computer must be very old for you to have those problems. I built mine in 2004 and have no problems such as you describe above. See my signature below for the major system specs.
Hello Charley,
Thanks for the welcome. Yes, it’s a pretty old box, about 2003.
Looking at my post, I don’t really see any problems listed.
I just want to be able to shut off the program. :-\
So no other Avast/ Stepford people care to weigh in on this thing? ;D
How many of the services running on your system provide a direct option to disable them? None maybe?
You can go to Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Services and stop it.
I can’t understand why users insist on disabling the essential services/programs of the computer precisely when they’re most needed… : :