I suggest at least once a month you scan all your HDD (all partitions)…
Daily, you can scan just the floppy or CD that you use. Oh, keep the resident providers enabled (you’ll be protected when you are connected to Internet).

Good, me too. But test your installation against www.eicar.org files (test virus not a real one).

Not all the buttons have tips. I translated the available tooltips of avast! some months ago and I can tell you it’s not the first part of the program to be updated as it is not essential. Anyway, that seems you have less resources available when you put the mouse over a button… Try again with the computer not so stressed. And try to change you skin to see if you get the tooltips.

Not all your needs will be set by default. You must at least go over all settings available (windows) of avast! and the resident providers dialog. Try to see the configurations of avast4.ini file that I posted here: http://www.avast.com/forum/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=1647

Woh, you ask so many questions… ;D