I have two installs of XP on the same PC.
One has avast! free and the other has Avira free.
On Avira’s forum, one member posted a situation that is similar to this thread. Some kind of hang
during logoff/shutdown, with corresponding similar messages in the event viewer.
The Avira support guy suggested it was due to the self-defence module,
and for now to de-activate it.
I was wondering if this could be relevant to the avast! situation - I’ve never heard this mentioned as
a possibility.