Yesterday I noticed that Avast Free was stating a later version of the program was available, so I decided to upgraded. All went well and there were no errors.
After the machine had rebooted I logged in and got to the desktop (Windows XP Pro) and found that whatever I clicked on would not start, in the end I had to use task manager to shutdown the PC (this took a very long time to close down).
I tried booting several times but always had the same issue.
Eventually I booted into safe mode & unistalled Avast. I then rebooted into normal mode and downloaded the latest version, I then restored settings and all is now well.
I thought I’d post this to help others who may be experiencing similar issues and also to see if anyone can work out reasons why this may be occuring.
Baz