system
7
I briefly tried Avast again (after exiting Bit Defender first and disabling its startup shortcut) but everything slowed down almost to a complete standstill (about 10 minutes to reboot and another 5 to shut down). After uninstalling Avast, everything returned to normal, except that a few strange things had happened (e.g. my wallpaper cycler program had lost all its categories). Perhaps it was because I didn’t take the trouble to close everything down before installing, but I didn’t have this problem last time. I’ll have another go at this when I have some time on my hands but I have some domestic problems which need urgent attention first. I’ll probably try the Hijackthis suggestion first and see what that shows up. I’ll post the result into this thread when I’ve done it. In the meantime, thanks to everyone for their help and suggestions.