Is there anyway that I can schedule my own timed scan. I cannot wait an hour at boot-up for Avast to complete a scan, I find this most intrusive. Manually effecting a scan leaves it to my memory, which isn’t that great. With previous antiviruses I have been able to choose what time each day AV will scan my computer. I hope that I can do this.
Welcome to the forums, baberainbow. 
Are you using the free Home version of avast?
Scheduling is only available in the paid Pro version of avast.
This is one of the few limitations of the Home version.
Yes I am using the Free version of Avast. This sounds to me like I will have to remember to do this manually each day. As I have only been using the AV for a few days I am not prepared to pay for it yet until I have decided to keep using it. I have just had a bad experience with another paid for AV and have just applied for a refund, so an trialing other AV’s at present before I start paying again. Thanks for the info.
You are welcome.
There is no real need to do a daily scan. Avast will protect you. Some here do weekly scans and some do only monthly scans.
I do scans even less often and have had no malware problems in over 5 years even though I visit some questionable sites while researching problems for those who ask for help.
I would suggest, though, that you do once a week scans until you are comfortable with the protection of avast. Then maybe move on to monthly scans.
Check this work around out - HOWTO: Scheduled Automatic Scans avast! Home Version!
The major disadvantage with the task scheduler trick of using ashquick.exe is, it will scan every file of the hdd, partition, folder or file that you set it to scan; even those files not considered a potential threat, this can take a long time. It is possible to add certain folders to the exclusions list for say your media files, etc. Care should be taken with the paths you want to exclude as this could leave you vulnerable if that folder got infected as it wouldn’t be scanned by the on-demand scanner as you have excluded it. However, should you access any infected file in a Folder in the Program Settings, Exclusions, the on-access scanner (Standard Shield) should detect it provided you haven’t put the exclusions in there.
The Pro version gives a lot more flexibility and the scan would follow the settings and exclusions, etc. of the regular scan.
With the different levels of protection (Web Shield, Internet Mail, P2P and Instant Messaging) and the fall back of the Standard Shield, I find the need for daily scheduled scans lessened. I prefer to do a manual scan with my regular weekly maintenance tasks.
In the Home version you can check the option “Don’t show this window again” when the first virus warning appears, select the “No action” button. This way, no action will be taken and you will given the results at the end of the scan (and you can perform actions from there). Over time this will become less of an issue, as the resident, on-access scanners are designed to intercept infection before it gets into your system.
- There was one suggestion to place something like the eicar virus test file at the start of the first drive to be scanned in a file like ~a-eicar.com that should soon be detected and you can do the option “Don’t show this window again” when the first virus warning appears, select the “No action” button. So you should have a list of files waiting your action.