i use norton 2004, and that physically halts the program thats downloaded the file until the scan is complete, so with zipped files which contain lots of files, it takes a long time to scan, so norton halts mirc for a long time.
There should be an option to add a file extention to be ignored by auto scan (least there is in norton), i use that when i'm sent any files with a lot of smaller files in it.
I was only assuming avast did something similar because thats the problem i get with norton, apart from that i'm afraid i can't help any further. there might be some suggestions somewhere on the forum if you search.
