This started with noticing that Avast On-Line protection was greyed out in any of my browsers (Firefox primary). I tried to contact Avast through the Dashboard, but it would not connect. I ran the Boot scan, and it suggested I download additional definitions, but it would not connect. Yesterday I started the computer and received “Windows Explorer is not responding”. I waited for self-repair, about 30 minutes later the screen came back. However, I could not run any programs, could not run Avast scan, nor MBAM. Additionally, I was given a message that my “Z” drive, a 1 Terabyte external needed to be formatted. I immediately shut down and am here. What can I do? I cannot connect to any help from my machine at home and am writing this from work.
hey and welcome to the forum to the windows explorer error you got this youtube video might fix that for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQM_uHI4epo
second that 1 terabite external drive you have at z what do you have on that one?
have you been able to boot into windows before with that z drive pluged in? you could try to unplug that driver and see if you can boot into windows agian
thirdly i would suggest you follow this guide and let a malware expert have a look at your system just in case it could be malware related
https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=194892.0
follow the guid and post the logs from mabm, and frst with addation file the two important ones.
good luck
Thanks for the reply. I don’t know why I didn’t try unplugging the Z drive, but I got Windows working again. However, I still cannot connect to Avast through the Dashboard or my browsers. I was able to scan, but nothing was found. I wonder if there is something in the Host file. I took a look, one set of entries seems out of place. Can this file be edited? I know that in the past I have done so, but it was a long time ago and I now don’t remember what procedure I used. I’ll try the other things next.