Setting scan times and folders

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I’ve recently started using Avast Free version and very happy too, so far!

Two questions:

  1. Is it possible to set Avast to scan at a pre-determined time or does it only offer a manual scan?

  2. Whenever I do a manual scan, it never ‘remembers’ which drives/folders I set it to scan last time. Do I have to set the drives/folders every time I do a scan or can I ‘fix’ them once and for all?

2

There is no facility to schedule scans in the free version of avast.

There are workarounds, and you can set the workaround to scan your preferred files/folders whenever you want.

However this has been discussed so many times in this forum that explaining it all again seems excessive.

Please use the search button at the top of the forum and search for “schedule scan” and I think you will find what you need - in the unlikely event you do not - let us know.

3

alanrf

OK. Thanks for that. At least I now know that I’m not missing a setting option somewhere.

I’ll stick with it as it is for now.

Thanks for your rapid response. :-))

4

Welcome to the avast forum.

I hope that avast will work well for you.

The workaround for scheduled scanning of your selected areas is quite easy to set up (I use it to scan my system on a once a week schedule).

5

This is probably the thread Alan refers to - 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. 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.

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 of protection 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.