Hi Bruce,

In the Avast control centre there is a resident provider called Internet
Mail. It 's dialog has tabs for Inbound mail (POP protocol), outbound mail
(SMTP protocol), inbound mail (IMAP protocol), News (NNTP protocol) and some
others which are not relevant. The ones mentioned here each have checkboxes
to enable/disable scanning.

There is another resident provider called Outlook/Exchange. This has, among
others, a tab for Scanner, with checkboxes for scanning inbound, outbound
and archived messages and message bodies and a tab for Outbound mail with a
checkbox for scanning attachments.

I really don't understand the distinction beteeen these two providers but
anyway I first tried unchecking all the boxes in all the above tabs. That had
no effect. I then tried terminating both providers which also had no effect.

So it seems that my only recourse is to do as you suggest and reinstall
Avast without the email protection. However I note that in the OEHelp link
you provided there is a post from Frank Saunders which mentions keeping virus
definitions up to date with LiveUpdate. I currently have all Microsoft
automatic updating disabled so does that leave my email system vulnerable
without the Avast scanners?