Please, try to be not offensive for the ones which is trying to help…

I read all the thread and can only say the same…
avast works perfectly on Windows 98. You say that At this point I’m kind of curious if the order of program execution during startup varies, and is somehow affecting things.. This could be the reason. ZA and avast can interfere each other. Did you try Startup Delayer to a proper way (order) of program to load?