Well, this is all a lot of work – reconfiguring my entire system, which works perfectly fine without Avast (and worked fine before the latest ‘update’) – just to get Avast to behave itself.

I can’t blame Avast so much – computers have moved on a lot since I bought this one. But at this point, I think the solution is to look for an antivirus that doesn’t take over my entire system (until I get around to replacing this computer). I used to use AVG, until that turned into bloatware. I’m afraid Avast is going the same route.