I’ll have a look at the persistent cache feature, and see if it helps. For the most part, yes, the archived folders are no scanned as often because most scanning is done “on demand”, but none-the-less, I have noticed that when scanning is turned on and running, especially without excuding my archives, my system memory and CPU loads takes a small noce dive–About 15-25%. Not a lot, but enough that when I’m trying to get things done, it slows me down. So I turn it all off. Part of the problem may well be that I’m not aware of or using any persistent cache, and any time Windows Explorer had the folder open, it’s reading/accessing the files for icons and other metadata, causing the demand scanner to re-scan the files… Defeating the purpose of only scanning on demand/as needed.

Of course, that still won’t solve the idea that if I specifically tell Avast to scan a file, it should override any other settings and do a complete scan of the file, regardless.