I installed Avast on my notebook, and set it to to the boot up scan. Now, my computer will not boot up at all. It goes through the ‘safe mode’ screen, I select a mode (I have gone through all of them), it begins to boot up, a blue screen (possible the opening Avast screen) flashes for less than a second, then it starts back on the ‘safe mode’ screen. It just keeps going in this circle. I tried using a boot disk, but it doesn’t work. Any ideas how to get back into my computer? Will I have to use the rescue disks? 
I don’t think it has anything to do with avast! (it doesn’t load it safe mode, for example).
Were there any infected files detected before the problem appeared? (or rather, did you ask avast! to remove any infected files?)
Don’t think so… it was working well before installation… a little slowly but OK. I installed Avast to run a diagnostic scan, just to see if anythng was there that might be slowing the machine down. I’ve done this a couple of times before and it worked OK. It seems that all of these programs find something that the others miss.
Is there any alternative way to boot up a machine in this condition? If I could boot up and uninstall or reinstall Avast, I expect the problem would be fixed, but I can’t get the machine past the opening screen. I don’t know if MS has a boot disk available for situations like this… or perhaps a 3rd party?
Which was your old antivirus? How did you remove it?
At Safe Mode, as Igor said, avast is not loaded and shouldn’t conflicting or messing the boot.
I had AVG, and I didn’t remove it (hmmmmm…) I didn’t get any warnings or anything.
For sure they’re incompatible and will conflict.
AVG Remover download here: http://www.grisoft.com/ww.download-tools
Looks like I’ve put my foot in it. Any ideas how to boot up the computer? Disk? magic? Am I stuck doing a restore? ???
The problem is that you should be able to boot in Safe Mode…
Maybe, just maybe, overinstallation can solve the problem and you won’t lose your programs, settings, data, files, etc.
Just choose ‘Repair’ installation of Windows and install ‘over’ the old installation.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;315341
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314058
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B315341&x=15&y=0
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/tips/doug92.mspx
Well, it won’t restore… it wants to do a Recovery, which will nuke all my files and go back to new. I need to find a copy of Windows, I guess, to try an overinstallation.
I miss Ms-DOS…