I created this account to complain.
avast installed itself sneakily by hiding in the updater to Partition Wizard by Minitool. The updater was launched through the software, so it attached itself to a legit program.
Why can’t I stop the service. why can’t I end the 700 avast programs it runs and launches on startup?
This is deliberately attempting to stop me removing it.
Wonderful software you guys have! I have to do a system restore to get this contamination off my hdd.