grinlord, as far as the avast program causing a problem, some people have said that, after a recent avast-update, their computers wouldn’t boot… apparently it was because of an issue with “trusteer”… i would assume that the problem was due to the avast program’s flagging a “trusteer” file, blocking it from running, causing a problem, but i have not seen where anyone has said that that was the case, only that uninstalling “trusteer” resolved the problem…

on another note, for the record, from what i have read, there have been several issues with the recent microsoft-updates for october, though i don’t know how serious the issues are… actually, i am in the process of going back and trying to find the articles that i read about the various issues with the various updates… i won’t go into a lengthy discussion about that…

since uninstalling the avast program seemed to resolve the problems that you were seeing, i will assume that the issue was related to the avast program and a conflict, of some type, with “trusteer”…