Nero products are extremely bloated. Burnaware Free is great along with ImgBurn. Did you remove your previous antivirus COMPLETELY before installing Avast? Most new laptops or desktops come preinstalled with either McAfee or Norton. Also you can exclude your cd drive from being scanned with Avast (not recommended). I have Avast and burn movies, music cd’s and ISO images with no problems what so ever. I highly doubt its Avast causing the issue. What exactly are you trying to burn? You also might want to check for updated firmware to your cd rom drive via your manufacture web site. Also I have had several cd’s and dvd’s that are blank, brand new but yet defective.