I am really pissed off at the way that the new Avast works. All programs including IE and Access do not work properly now. Please advise.
Please describe what “do not work properly” means… Like, any errors, logs, screenshots etc.
And: Which version of Avast!? What OS? What other security software? As you can see from the Forum, most users are not having issues with MIcrosoft Products, so we need to help figure out what your problems are. 
Well… seems an incompatibility and not avast itself…
Which is your firewall? Your old antivirus?
Which is not “properly” here?
Avast is the ONLY security software I have on the 2 computers. Both computers run Windows XP. Both computers have problems with running IE, Access, Excel, Word, Outlook and other Microsoft applications. They run slowly (waiting 3 minutes for the screen to load) or don’t run at all. It is an Avast problem since it did not happen before I upgraded. Avast version ersion 5.0.462
This does sound like conflict, as avast doesn’t block, but scans and alerts to infection, which presumably you don’t get or you would have said.
Why would avast single out MS applications other than all applications, that just doesn’t make sense. MS Office applications have macro capabilities in their documents and would be scanned, certain AVs have hooks into the MS Docs and even when uninstalled. These hooks remain and this can cause conflict, which appears to be blocking as the hook locks the file.
Have (or did) you another Anti-Virus installed in this system, if so what was it and how did you get rid of it ?
Do other browsers work, e.g. firefox, chrome or opera ?
@ the OP: how do you know Avast is responsible for your multiple issues on those machines? possible bad upgrade; uninstall avast completely on both systems and reinstall from scratch (as opposed to upgrading from 4.8 )
Just reaching here, winXP comes with a “security center”
that can be found via the control panel. My version had some built in win security cr*p
already running, which I of course got rid of.
You may have ONLY installed avast!..but that does not mean that there might not be another virus program on your system. For example, the internet provider I use had decided to give everyone one of the bloated cow anti-virus programs…it automatically ended up on my system before I knew what was happening.
I also opened up a variety of win office works.
try uninstall 462 and install this new version.
[b]http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=58183.0[/b]
Hi jsmcc, I am also running XP SP3 and all MS programs including IE8 are
working real well. Avast does not slow my machine at all. I don’t have any
answers for you but its probably a program in your computer that’s creating
compatibility issues somewhere.
Bo