If you want to run AV without the boot scan (yeah, I know you shouldn't) then NEVER do this by unchecking an AV line in autoexec.bat using msconfig. If you must run like this, then use whatever facility is provided in the AV Control Panel. Maybe that should have been obvious! AVG AV "hated it". It caused intermittent freeze-ups on booting - no system tray. I got away with it on Norton AV5, although it could be the reason for some shelliconcache rebuild gliches. The reason for posting this is because I made several changes at the same time, so it took me ages to realise what the problem was. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Also posted on Windows 9x forum.

AVG has a bootup scanner disable option in its own program. Why work around that?

Yeah, quite noname, that's exactly the point I was making - but some folks prefer to twiddle their own way (not so good maybe).