Set Avast 5 to run at boot, now PC won't start up.

So today I went to do my bi-weekly scan, updated Avast and ran a full scan. It found 3 items, which was a bit surprising (haven’t found anything active in ages). They were all highs, though I didn’t think to write down the names. I moved all three to quarantine, and then set a boot scan for good measure.

When I attempt to boot, the PC posts without a problem, but hangs at a black screen when it should be accessing Avast/starting Windows. Because it hangs immediately at the attempt to boot the OS, I cannot access the advanced boot menu to attempt safe mode or last-known-good config.

I’m burning Avira’s rescue disk as we speak, thoughts in the meantime on fixes?

As a followup, an interesting little wrinkle has come out. It seems I am unable to mount the boot drive in Avira now, and when listening it does not appear to be spinning up on boot. I find it wildly coincidental that a (fairly new) HDD without any previous problems would suddenly fail when I have a virus issue. Anyone have any experience with this?

Ok one more update: the hard drive seems to be fine. I was able to mount it and run full scans in both Avira and Dr. Web, both came back clean. It seems to me that Avast is unable to start properly, and since it is attempting to start at boot is preventing Windows from booting. Thoughts?

Have you now tried Safe Mode?