Pixelated textures after Avast! install

A couple months ago I tried Avast! for the first time. While installing Avast!, one of the features it requested to install was a scan that displayed while the screensaver was on. So, I pressed yes and chose Bubbles 64, since that was the screensaver I normally used, and my computer is 64-bit. I noticed after that, that when the screensaver came on, there was no scan being displayed, and everything behind the bubbles, which were normal quality themselves, was pixelated. I assume it was the screensaver scanner that had something to do with that. A few days later (even before my free internet security trial had finished) I uninstalled Avast! in hope that that would resolve the issue of the pixelation, but that did not help.

I have noticed that various textures on my computer are pixellated since it started happening with the bubbles background. In some programs, text is pixelated. Buttons in others. Entire pictures and textures in others. Even some programs’ icons in the taskbar are pixelated. No matter how I fiddle with my graphics settings, it is always the same apps, the same places, the same pixelation.

I never had these problems before I installed Avast! and at first I have though i could live with them, but now they have become an incredible annoyance as some parts of programs which are extensively pixelated are basically unusable.

Computer specs:
Device: Toshiba laptop
CPU: Inter Core i5-2410M @2.3GHz
RAM: 6GB DDR3
HDD: 500GB, split in half in two partitions (D:\ with windows 8 installed)
Graphics: Built-in

I have tried all methods on this page and none worked, method 2 even said there were no errors detected. This glitch is also not on my windows 8 partition, on which Avast! was not installed. I hardly use Windows 8, though, since all my programs are installed on my windows 7 account.

Could someone please help me with this? I do not wish to completely re-install windows to get rid of this.

Have you tried another screensaver? Perhaps switching away from Bubbles and back again might work. (Just a thought)

Yes, I have tried changing screensavers and, while they are not pixelated as there is no background, the same textures in the other programs are still pixelated, which does not help.

Have you reinstalled the graphics drivers?

I would make a fresh install of Avast .

Use this tool to remove avast, http://files.avast.com/iavs9x/avastclear.exe then start again with a fresh install.

I went onto Intel’s site now, and when I check for updates for my graphics driver I got this:

Product Detected Intel® HD Graphics 3000

Current Driver Installed 8.15.10.2353

A customized computer manufacturer driver is installed on your computer. The Intel Driver Update Utility is not able to update the driver. Installing a generic Intel driver instead of the customized computer manufacturer driver may cause technical issues. Contact your computer manufacturer for the latest driver for your computer.

So, I am not going to try reinstall it, I do not wish to run into more problems. Window’s device manager says I have the best available driver when I press update. Remember, it is a on-chip (built-in) graphics card, on a laptop.

EDIT: I tried rolling back the driver, then updating it to what it was, but the rolled-back driver couldn’t even display the screensaver (just said it needed a driver that could use Direct3D or somesuch. The driver was version 6.something) When it had updated again, the pixelation was still there.

I have already uninstalled Avast!, but I shall see if reinstalling then removing it works.

Edit: I need to go to bed now. I shall reinstall and uninstall Avast! tomorrow.

Reinstalling then uninstalling Avast! did not work. When it was installed, I even went onto “personalise” and changed the screensaver to the avast overlay, which was set to bubbles and the background was still pixelated, excluding the Avast! status pane and the bubbles.

Reinstall the graphics driver and see if it is solved or not.

The graphics driver is a custom install, but I did roll it back to a previous version then reinstall the latest version. That did not make a difference.

Have you already upgraded to Windows 8.1 ?

Give these two tools a try.
They will reset things to default which could solve the problem.

http://support.microsoft.com/fixit/en-us
http://www.tweaking.com/content/page/windows_repair_all_in_one.html

I could not find anything that fixed to problem on either of the links. The repair all-in-one said that there were no errors found. As for windows 8.1 I’ve got two partitions on my computer’s hard drive and one has windows 8.1 on it. I can choose one of the two OSs to boot on when I start the computer. The pixelation glitch does not occur on the windows 8.1. This is so strange… Thanks for they help, Eddy.

So it seems to have something to do with W8 and is solved in 8.1.
You see, with patience and trial/error we can come a long way

I’m not sure about Windows 8.1. I didn’t install Avast! there. I only installed Avast! on Windows 7.

Bump

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-vista/troubleshoot-monitor-and-video-card-problems

https://www.google.co.uk/search?client=opera&q=windows+7+pixelated+screen&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&channel=suggest

Sorry, these are all pretty much saying I should reinstall/update my graphics drivers. The prior I have done, which didn’t work. The latter can’t be done, as windows says it has a custom driver.