Thanks for the information about shutting down the computer, etc., but I don’t agree with it. I will not be saddled by such unsubstantiatied rumors, and will continue as I have for the last 26 years of computing.

Well, I’ve had different interests over the years, some of which require the computer to run 100% full-blast, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. I don’t claim that’s normal for home computerists. I guess it’s not, but it’s how I use a computer, and will probably continue in that vein. Some of my earlier work was statistical, and involved calculating the mathematically best way to play the game of blackjack using different card counting methods. You could keep a computer running forever on such things. ;D More recently I have been using ChessBase software from Germany which ultimately seeks to solve the game of chess completely with titles such as Fritz, Shredder, Junior, Hiarcs, Tiger, etc. That software uses 99%+ of processor time and almost all of available memory when it is running, and I keep it running almost 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. Any other applications on my computer must run in that environment, or not at all. It works generally OK with Windows XP unless an application also wants/needs to monopolize the processor and memory, so sometimes I must assign higher/lower priorities to the processes involved.

FYI, here’s the trick involved. Suppose you want to run Internet Explorer (or any application) at abovenormal priority. Copy a shortcut somewhere and modify the properties to read as follows:
Target: C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c start /abovenormal C:\Progra~1\Intern~1\iexplore.exe
Start in: C:\WINDOWS\system32

You can get a list of the different switches involved by the usual “/?” method in a command window.

So avast, and all other software, must multitask in this environment on my computer. It looks like the avast icons in systray don’t behave 100% properly in that case. In particular the “i” icon and the VRDB operation misbehaves. It took 4 days running full-time to complete the VRDB on my computer. I don’t know if that’s something the avast authors can fix, or not. In any case I’ve set it to run only every 3 months, rather than the default 3 weeks, which I can probably live with.
JB