Recommendations:

[ol]- You’ve a hardware issue with your HDD. Leaving things as they are is inviting certain disaster. Your HDD is telling you it is going to die. No functional HDD, no computer. Back up at least two copies of important personal files (not on the dying HDD) before it does go. You should get another (EIDE?) drive of the same size or larger and clone it to the new one before this happens. A free disk imaging/cloning software is here: http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/free-backup-software-features.htm Have used this in the past and it worked well. You can also make an image to a second HDD and remove the bad HDD and restore that image from the second HDD to the new one. Either way, your problem will be solved.

  • Issues with current a/v install can be attributed (caused by) to left over drivers from earlier versions of avast! being left behind or other a/v programs once installed and then removed: http://www.avast.com/faq.php?article=AVKB11#artTitle Suggest running this tool: http://www.avast.com/uninstall-utility Follow directions and begin by removing the oldest remnants to the newest. Reboot after each run of the tool. Since you’ve got at least two older versions, start with version 6 and move forward. Reboot after each one is done.[/ol]

Once you’ve taken care of the pending hardware issue, then proceed to step two. XP system here has been cloned with a remanufactured 40GB EIDE HDD, and has been in service for six months with no issues. Original HDD is still serviceable and can be put back in if need be. If you’re planning to toss the old hard drive, you can either wipe old data off of it, or physically destroy the drive so it cannot be used again. A hammer struck with great force on the removed HDD several times will work nicely for this.

Likely your issues you see are directly attributable to the failing HDD, as all data must come off the drive, and then run in system memory, for avast! to work as it should. Not a fault of version 8, I’d say, under this working scenario, as data needed is being uploaded to memory @ ~3 MB/sec, instead of 40+ MB/sec. Must be as slow as watching the grass grow at times.

Since Microsoft will end all support for XP SP3 on April 8, 2014, is it time to consider a newer computer?

Refurbished off-lease systems can be bought here for as little as $120.00 USD (Off-lease means business units, which tend to be of better build quality than consumer): http://www.microcenter.com/site/stores/default.aspx Newegg is also an option.