I've often seen advice from Microsoft MVPs on one or both of these
newsgroups that the email scanning facility of one's antivirus program
should be turned off, because it can cause problems in OE and does not serve
any useful purpose.

I've just installed WinXP, OE6 and AVG Free on my wife's computer. When
looking to turn off the AVG email scanning, I went to the AVG Free Forum,
quoted the MVP advice referred to above, and asked whether email scanning
should be turned off while using OE as our email client. The AVG reply was:

"In my opinion this isn't a good idea. For one, if the email scanner is
setup properly there will be no issues. The default settings already support
the majority of the users with the main ones that it requires changes for
being the SSL type of email which that you setup manually.

"While most ISPs also scan email now.. not all do and not all antivirus
scanners are made equal so I prefer to scan my own. I would rather catch a
malware before it got to my email client than to rely on the on access
scanner of an antivirus program. "

I'd be grateful for some comments from MVPs on this AVG reply. If the
original MVP advice still stands, why? And what issues gave rise to this
advice? Thank you in anticipation.

Lindsay Graham