I went to update to the next program version from 7.0.1474 today and as I expected from past experience my pc froze and became unusable. I had checked the forums before I did the update and all seemed okay. So I did a system restore and somehow I had been put onto the Avast Pro Antivirus 30 day trial offer and I was told I cannot update unless I start to trial. I can not seem to find any way out of it. Any help would be much appreciated.
Running XP SP3.
Malwarebytes Pro and Free Zone Alarm.
uninstall with this read instructions http://www.avast.com/en-no/uninstall-utility
download and install http://filehippo.com/download_avast_antivirus/
Excellent. Thanks for that 
I am also having problems with V 8 and would like to go back to V 7. If I go to filehippo even though I pick a version of V 7 it still downloads V 8 again. Any idea of where I can get a V 7 copy for the free version.
You can get older versions of Avast from this website.
http://www.oldapps.com/avast_antivirus.php
It would be better to explain your problems with Avast 8 and thus could help them get resolved by giving the information.
I just made another post about I cannot access gmail accounts using Windows Mail on Vista Home Basic. By the way, thanks for the link for older versions if necessary.