system
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My apologies for taking so long to come back to the forum to followup. The PC in question belongs to my in-laws, who were running Avast at my recommendation. It turns out that the system was full-on infected with some malware that was gradually removing functionality, running fake messages, and asking for money to repair the damage. Someone on site had to come and fix the computer (I live in another state). They were able to boot into safe mode and remove the malware that way. They then installed Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes.
Granted, they probably had other security problems here (I’m not sure their login account had a password, and possibly the settings for Avast were not password protected either), however I am rather disappointed that Avast was not able to come through. I myself run Avast (or least ran it when a PC was my primary machine) and have never had problems.
I’m sorry I can’t provide any more information about the issue.