Avast 7 causes unresponsive system (Windows XP 64)

This is going to be a long post but this event happens under pretty weird circumstances, so I have to explain it thoroughly.

First of all, I have been using Avast for more that a year now and it was never a problem. It was always a really light antivirus and a very good choice as opposed to the Norton’s overweight monster and Kasperski’s rocket scientist configurations complexitivity. However, all that changed after the recent version 6-7 program update.

The event I’ll try to describe can occur during great system stress or even when the system is doing nothing at all. The explorer freezes, and all and every action related to it, like “start” or “my computer” is what actually makes the freeze, so I can’t tell this happened until I try to use any explorer functions or context menus in the desktop.
If a program is in the foreground at the moment, it seem to work normally, but does not close or operates any context menus, actually any action like that will make it unresponsive. The mouse can always move, but not always click, and there seems to be great effort from the system to just Alt+Tab between windows that have not crashed. Those crashed appear as a white stain in the desktop wallpaper.
The task manager fails to show with the Ctrl+Alt+Del shortcut, even after extensive amount of time given to it. When it is already loaded and the event happens, it does not show anything in particular, not excessive use of CPU/RAM or anything like that. Also, opening any context menus/tabs to it also makes it unresponsive, just like all the other programs.
As I see it the only way for the system to respond again is by hard resetting the computer.
I don’t know what causes it to react that way, only how to prevent it, and that is by shutting down all of the avast shields, so I know for sure that is the culprit. I’ve even tried some of the shields, and not all and the event happened again. With file system shield only on, it also happened.
I’ve recently tried to connect with TeamViever7 and yet another program like that (PhoneMyPC) from my smartphone, during the event. Neither program could see the computer or establish a connection. Then I tried a simple WIFI-LAN file copy from my smartphone again and that worked. That gave my the idea that maybe Avast puts on some kind of warning in my screen, but I can’t see it for some reason. Those warnings use real time priority and won’t go away or let you press anything if you don’t “yes” or “no” them. Could that be it? And if yes, what is the next step?

I don’t see how offering any BS dumps will help because this doesn’t appear to be a BSOD. It doesn’t reboot the machine nor screams out ERROR!! It just makes the whole GUI unresponsive. I can however provide some Event Viewer errors that tend to happen at the same time the event happens.

Errors - Source SideBySide. Those 3 errors seem to repeat allot.

Dependent Assembly Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls could not be found and Last Error was The referenced assembly is not installed on your system.
Resolve Partial Assembly failed for Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls. Reference error message: The referenced assembly is not installed on your system.
Generate Activation Context failed for C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Update\1.3.21.99\GoogleCrashHandler64.exe. Reference error message: The referenced assembly is not installed on your system.

and lastly this happens some times but not always after the hard reset and make the desktop load incredibly long.

source - win32k
Failed to create a desktop due to desktop heap exhaustion.

Some basic computer info.
MSWinXP64 Pro SP2 v2003
GIGABYTE : GA-K8NSC-939
AMD : Athlon 64x2 4600+ 2.41 GHz
Kingston : 3.00 GB RAM
Sound Blaster Live!5.1
WD 1TB Caviar Green
Pioneer DVDRW+R 16x

and programs running at startup in order of appearance are

NetLimiter 3 Client
Daemon Tools LITE
PCTV Remote (A server program for PC usage through IR transmitter, connected at Serial port 1)
PhoneMyPc server (Teamviever like program for smartphone direct computer control)
Aladdin eToken PKI Client (A client program for smart cards)
And of course, the Avast 7 client.

Any help would be great at this time.

I had similar problems on Win XP/SP3 32 bit.
In the end uninstalled 7 and went back to 6. See here http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=94424.0.
Hope that helps.

Thanks for the reply and the suggestion, I’m trying it for 2 days now and it seems to work just fine like it used to. The 7 version had really messed up my system, but I suspect I won’t be able to use that one for a long time either for it won’t be supported forever.