I’ve got exactly this error as well. I am so relieved it’s not just me! For what it’s worth, here’s my sorry tale:

A Windows 7 Update around the start of October hung on shutdown & I had to eventually do a hard reboot. From that point on I have had progressively worse computer problems. Everything starts up OK to begin with but within a few minutes (pretty much the point that Windows Update comes back and tells me that there are more updates to download & install - I have them set on manual rather than automatic) the computer freezes, especially when I try and run a program, especially Windows Explorer / Start button). I’ve tried system restore and deleting downloaded updates from the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution dir, but the interesting (and annoying) thing is that the computer ALWAYS thinks it still has updates to finish installing. Shortly after starting up in normal mode, & if I get to the Start button before it all freezes, the Shutdown option has the ‘install updates’ exclamation mark icon. And it then just hangs again. Ctrl-Alt-Del has no effect & I can’t access Task Manager. I’ve tried using some Registry cleaners and even though I had a few issues, nothing that was fixed made any difference - the Reg Cleaners think everything is now OK. But it isn’t.

I have to admit I didn’t link all of this with a possible Avast issue, but this is the only place I have seen on the Web that references exactly the same problem with machines running Win7, Avast and the recent updates.

I’m on Win7, sp1, 32bit. Currently the only way to reliably get on to the machine & browse the web is using Safe Mode with networking. The fact that Safe Mode doesn’t load up Windows Update made me think the issue was just with WU. But Safe Mode also disables Avast.

My theory - Avast has stopped something in WU working properly. WU now has some semi-installed components sitting in a queue somewhere in my system and it wants to complete the installation but can’t. Windows Explorer then hangs, taking Task Manager & Win7 OS with it.

Please help resolve this! I was up until silly o’clock trying to fix this last night! :cry:

I want to get the semi-installed WU components removed and Avast to work correctly with WU. Any guidance would be gratefully received!

Cheers
Nick