no keyboard or mouse access to UI after forced upgrade on Windows7 64bit

I purposely was using an older Avast version on Windows7 64bit because every time I upgraded I would lose access to the Avast UI, it would popup but be un-clickable, un-tab-able

Yesterday there was a forced upgrade, appears to be 22.1.6921.707

and again, the problem is back, no keyboard or mouse access to the UI

All I can do is go to the windows taskbar and right-click to close the avast window which fortunately works.

The last version where the keyboard/mouse worked on the UI was 20.4.5312.0

So some rewrite or change in the UI interface broke after 20.4.5312

Is there a troubleshooting or alternate mode for the UI that I can try?

Maybe some setting for visually disabled folks who need conventional windows UI for assistance software (I actually have that problem but I can still see on a big screen)

Thank you for any help, officially or otherwise.

Interesting accidental discovery:

tabbing doesn’t work through the menu/options

however SHIFT-tab (to go backward through options) WORKS

then spacebar/enter works on most items

escape can get out of most deeper menus

but mouse clicks are still useless

if Avast is going to completely rewrite the windows UI for apps then they need to write support for all the possibilities

or give an option to turn off the UI overlay and let windows do the UI management

by the way, the backup settings option no longer does anything, it appears to run, it pops up the save file dialog, but the file is never created

manually running it also fails

“C:\Program Files\Avast Software\Avast\VisthAux.exe” /exportsettings /mask:260046607 /version:369166792 /file:“H:\temp\settings.avconfig”

(prompts for admin access, appears to run, doesn’t create anything)

Reported to Avast. Let’s see if that helps.