I know my way around XP pretty well, so nothing is running that shouldn’t be. I did indeed uninstall Avast using the utility and reinstall it. This seemed to help a bit, but not all the way.

It’s Avast that’s causing the problem, nothing else. If I turn off Avast, everything works fine. As soon as I turn it back on again, the computer has problems.

I suspect there’s a glitch in this version of Avast’s monitoring function, something conflicting with the particular configuration of my machine. I can’t tear down the machine just to make Avast work. And I can’t go on a wild goose chase to try to fix it either.

Since it’s Windows, my guess is Avast is trying to use memory it’s not supposed to be, or that one of the other components (i.e., my sound card) is also trying to use.

I’ve found other complaints of similar issues with past versions of Avast, maybe it’s just my turn.