I tried to open Avast several times over the last week to run a virus scan, but it has disappeared from my taskbar and when I click on the shortcut, it gives me the hourglass and nothing happens. Either that, or I get a startup message that says “wait please. Testing memory and startup items” and then dissappears. Should I reinstall? Did I do something wrong? Do I need to register something? I’ve used this program probably three or four times in the last few months with no problems.
also, I seem to be infected with a particularly nasty virus of some sort that calls itself Spylocked 4.0. I tried to uninstall it, but it still gives me phony warnings and redirects my webpages on occasion. Spyhunter isn’t free and I’m reluctant to do a manual removal. Any assistance or advice would be greatly appreciated!
Reinstalling avast won’t be a bad idea in this situation…
After that, thinking it will be working, maybe you can schedule a boot time scanning with avast. Start avast! > Right click the skin > Schedule a boot-time scanning. Select for scanning archives. Boot. Other option is scanning in SafeMode (repeatedly press F8 while booting).
Then it will be good if you download, install, update and run AVG Antispyware. Some users recommend SUPERantispyware, Spyware Terminator and/or a-squared (take care about false positives).
If any infection is detected, better and safer is send the file to Quarantine than to simple delete than.