help!! getting 60 second countdown

Please help? I’m getting 60 second countdown after uninstalling old programs from 4 school laptops I put Avast free on the last 2 and ran a full system scan after the first 2 went down. Their sophos anti virus was out of date and don’t know when it last updated. Avast didn’t find any threats but after removing old programs from these 2 laptops after restart get same error message:
System Shutdown:
This system is shutting down. Please save all work in progress and log off. Any unsaved changes will be lost. This shutdown was initiated by NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM

Time before shutdown: 00:00:60

Message:

Windows must now restart because the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Service terminated unexpectedly.
Does it if i boot up in safe mode as well Can anyone help please I’m a newb to this forum so apologise if there’s already a thread on this subject
Can a virus or worm or whatever just start up when only programs have been uninstalled?

Their sophos anti virus was out of date and don't know when it last updated.
did you uninstall it before installing avast ?

If you suspect infected, follow this guide and attach logs from Malwarebytes / OTL / aswMBR
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=53253.0