Some time back I set up a one-off scheduled scan and ticked the box to shut down the system on completion automatically. Since then Avast insists on repeating the process at the same time each week even though I have checked and rechecked the settings - Schedule type = Once and the date is showing 10 March (it happened this evening 14 March). How can I get the system to obey instructions? Avast free on Windows XP Home
Have you tried to completely un-schedule the scan? Personally I never schedule any scan. I do a full scan once a week and a couple of
quick scans between each full scan. 
Well, first (if you have not already) I would check if your system date/time is okay. That would be about the only normal thing I could think of that would cause this.
Even if the date/time was incorrect the scan should not have ran more than once. Or am I wrong? ???
I’m now thinking maybe the OP should “un-schedule” the scan then try to “re-schedule” the scan to see if they get the same reaction.
Anyway I hope the OP reports back.
System date / time syncs with my watch so should be OK. With hindsight I suppose I was simple enough to assume that when the settings box says “once” in binary it means “once” and not “weekly”. May be one of the Avast programmers can pick this up and sort it. I find that getting the system to scan last thing at night and then shut down is very convenient - but not if it is going to switch me off when it feels like it. Hopefully resetting to never will cure this.
I’m still curious, have you tried to un-schedule then re-schedule to see if you get the same results? ???
If this is a one time event then something other than avast is the root cause.
I have not yet unscheduled but will do so. However your curiosity will have to wait until Wed 21st evening UK time to find out if the Avast ghost returns on “schedule” to turn my PC off again …
I can wait. I’m following this thread via notification.
I’m going to test this, but if you have set to fire once, it should have a specific date and time for that once to run. I have set it for 21:00 on 17/03/2012 in just over 20 minutes time. We will have to see if it generates any ghost scans at 21:00 after that.
EDIT: I have also set it to wake up the system to start the scan just in case I’m away.
I’m doing the same thing!
Edit: I’m going to check to see if any ghosts show up over the next few days. ???
It’s been three days since I tried to replicate the OP’s issue. And could not do so.
avast did what it is designed to do.
No replication here, but I rather think we will have to wait a week at least, given that is the frequency the OP is experiencing.
+1
I can now report back to all you interested and helpful people.
I checked at the weekend (and again now) that the box to schedule a scan was unticked - the text was greyed out as you would expect and the scan date that could still just be read was 10 March.
To my great surprise right on weekly unofficial schedule last night 21 March the pop-up screen appeared alerting me that a scan had been completed and was about to close down the system unless I cancelled this within the time limit. On this occasion I was able to abort the shutdown but only because I had been anticipating it.
Either there must be a bug that overrides the unschedule procedure, or there must be some additional secret procedure that I am missing but which is required to keep Avast in its box when not scheduled.
Help!
PS Avast Version I am using is 6.0.1203. Having read some corresp in the forum I don’t want to upgrade to 7 until I am sure that all the bugs have been sorted out. Windows XP Home.
Well 7.0.1426 doesn’t appear to be an issue and is an update over an above the the original release of avast7.
Even your version isn’t the latest avast 6 Version (6.0.1367), so at the very least I would get that, but I would say you should do a clean install of avast 7.0.1426, I assume that you are using the free version:
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Download the latest version of avast, 7.0.1426 http://files.avast.com/iavs5x/avast_free_antivirus_setup.exe and save it to your HDD, somewhere you can find it again (if you didn’t save your last download). Use that when you reinstall.
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Download the avast! Uninstall Utility, aswClear.exe find it here and save it to your HDD (it has uninstall tools for 5.x, 6.0.x and 7.0.x).
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- Now uninstall avast! (using add remove programs, if you can’t do that start from the next step), reboot.- 2. run the avast! Uninstall Utility from safe mode, for 6.x, once complete reboot into normal mode.- 3. install the latest version, reboot.
Tks for the upgrade advice which I am sure will come in useful. It so happened that I did this (upgrade) previously and it coincided with my previous PC failing and needing replacement. Probably no cause and effect but on the if it ain’t broke principle I would prefer to get my present system to work and upgrade at some later stage. Unless of course someone states categorically that there is something wrong with the version that I have which would give me no option. There was some correspondence recently in the forum from someone who had had a bit of a disaster when upgrading to V 7.
I assume that as far as virus prevention is concerned the two versions do the same thing in the end even if visually they appear to go about it differently.
V7 does have streaming updates which means that instead of having to wait for a definitions update it is streamed on a more regular basis
There always seems to be someone who has some kind of a glitch. But over all v7.0.1426 is very stable. I have found that v7 is a huge leap forward for avast. On cnet.com avast is the most downloaded software http://download.cnet.com/windows/?tag=hdr;brandnav
With well over 150 million users one must always expect some body else with an issue. That is the exception not the rule. Give v7 a chance. Then if you have any problem come back here. There are a lot of other users willing to help.
There have been several stability improvements and added features since Avast 6.0.1203. See http://www.avast.com/en-us/release-history.