Is there anyway to disable this in Acid Pro 10 and 11? I referenced an old thread where someone said to type "/NOVSTGROVEL" in the target field, after clicking on properties on the startup icon. This does not work.

Is there a config file somewhere that I can change something so VST's are only scanned and updated manually?

Ableton, Fruity Loops and most other daws have a simple disable option in preferences. It would be nice of the devs would add that option as well.