Is there a way to prevent Hitman Pro from scanning at startup, does anyone know? The option can be disabled, but it gets re-enabled when I start the app again. It doesn't seem to save the configuration anywhere. Since it's on Win7, and the downloadable file is not an installer, but the direct executable program, I put it outside of Program Files, but it won't obey the changes in configuration. Or could it be that it is a paid feature?

When I launch the latest HitmanPro.exe on my XP system, it copies itself  to C:\Program Files\Hitman Pro 3.5 and places a shortcut on the desktop. When run from that "proper" location in Program Files, the "Scan at startup" setting is remembered. Otherwise the startup setting gets re-enabled just as you indicated.

So strangely enough (on my XP system anyway) the downloaded file is an installer (at least in a limited sense). Weird and unexpected behavior IMO.

btw in the main interface you can select "Early Warning Scoring" (EWS) to perform a scan without internet connection.

Regards

I make a full image of my system disk at install, then when I add major apps.
I run no anti-malware app of any sort.

Why? I did support for a while and saw every app come in the door on infected machines.
I do not believe 'the cloud' or behavior based tools are the answer either.
The malware changes itself constantly, well less than 60 minutes. Another engineer and I watched a site for two days. Every time we'd go there, we'd get a "new" infection. KAV found the old ones, never a new one.
Closest we came was Prevx, but then got numerous slowdowns.

I have not run any "protection" for two years. I was infected one time by a 'legit' download that I was too lazy to run past VirusTotal. I just restored my system image and 4 minutes later was back.

To make my family feel better, I install Microsoft Security Essentials Beta on their machines. Little impact, and very rare to have a false positive.