Creating a custom scan
By clicking on the “Create Custom Scan” button, you can define a completely new scan with its own scan parameters.
By default, the area to be scanned is set as “All harddisks”. To select a new area to be scanned, just open the drop-down menu and select the additional area to be scanned. To remove an area, click on it once and then click “delete”. You can also specify how avast! should recognize potentially suspicious files that should be scanned, either by checking the file extension or by checking the actual content.
If “content” is selected, avast! will look inside every file to determine what type of file it is and whether it should be scanned.
If “name extension” is selected, then by default, only files with extensions such as “exe”, “com”, “bat” etc. will be scanned. You can add other file extensions by clicking on “select additional areas” and typing the required file extension in the box. Then click OK. To remove a file extension, click on it once and then click “delete”.
On this page, you can also access other settings, for example, if you want to schedule a regular scan or a scan to run just once at a particular time, if you want to exclude specific folders or files from being scanned, or if you want to define what action should be taken in the event that a virus is detected – see the section “Scan Settings”.