Hey Bob
Gotcha. It is good to know they are part of the same company. I didn’t know that.
I am working with support and hopefully, we can achieve a successful resolution soon.
Thanks for your follow up.
Ash.
Hopefully you’ll have a good outcome. If that’s not the case then follow the link I’ve sent you.
This keeps going from bad to worse.
They got me to shut down the PC after the updates.
Then hold down the power button for 20 seconds to do a reset.
Now the PC keeps looping on startup.
Tries to start, goes to a blue screen for 1 second, then goes back to booting up. Just keeps looping like that.
Won’t even start in safe mode now. Keeps looping even when selecting safe mode.
And this is with paid support.
It’s like I paid to have support done, to waste 7 hours of my time and leave me with a PC that can’t even boot.
WOW.
They are now saying they are going to reinstall windows 7 cos nothing is working.
They suggest I will have to load up all my programs again, from scratch. Another 2 hours of windows 7 install from USB.
WTF?
Contact avast and ask your money back for that horrible support.
Right now, I would say install Windows from scratch.
Who knows what else that wannabe ( not Wallaby ;D ) tech has messed up.
- Format the drive
- Install Windows
- Install the latest drivers for all devices
- Create the user accounts that/how you want
- Install the applications that you normally are using (for all accounts)
- Make changes in the settings if you wish to do so (e.g. other background, font type etc)
- Put back data (if you want)
- Create a image of the drive
With the image you can restore a system in (depending on the speed of the system) 10 - 40 minutes.
Much faster than installing Windows and everything from scratch. 
Hey Eddy
Thanks for being awesome. Very much appreciated. Nice Wallaby joke too. Very cool.
I’m taking your suggestion and going ahead with what you suggest.
I managed to view the SSD hard drive on another PC and copy my files from it across.
I had just upgraded from 120SSD to 240SSD. So my old 120SSD is already formatted. I might put Win 7 back on that.
Then keep my 240 for another build.
No matter what, it seems all the programs I had installed will have to be put back on from scratch. Bummer.
That’s the toughest part. The time needed to reinstall win 7 and then load all my programs back on.
Again I truly appreciate your follow up.
Thanks
Ash.
Yes it will take some time to do everything, but the goods news is that you have a smooth running system again without any pollution
Hey Eddy
Might be a silly question, but what anti virus would you suggest if I reinstall win 7 64bit?
Depends if you want a free one or a paid one.
Free > avast
Paid > Kaspersky
Thanks.
Not sure if my stress levels can handle anything to do with Avast or AVG again.
I have a call with tech support tomorrow for the format HDD and reinstall Win7. Will have to wait and see.
Cheers.
You might want to take a look at the following:
http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-reinstall-windows-10-without-losing-data/
If you’re really going to downgrade and need to re-install your favorite programs,
take a look at https://ninite.com/
Everything there is clean and, you can install many programs at once.
Eh, Ashley is using Windows 7, not 10 
Ashley, it isn’t hard to install Windows yourself.
No need to pay someone if it isn’t needed, right
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows7
- Get the ISO
- Create a bootable medium with it (USB/DVD)
- Boot from it and follow the instructions on the screen
Doesn’t change the use of https://ninite.com/ to make installing her programs easier.
Why installing something that people don’t need at all ?
It is only polluting the system and there really is no need to do that.
What are you talking about ??? It’s a service not something that gets installed.
This part confuses me the most. And this is probably what bricked the system. This is essentially hard reset which means data not written to actual disk was erased from caches and memory. Why on earth would anyone instruct your PC to be restarted in such a way? And if support really said that, then avast! team needs to have a serious chat with their staff (whoever runs this support).
You are so correct Rejzor. I kept telling the technical supervisor that everything was still not working but we could login via safe mode etc UNTIL they did that.
The annoying thing was, all this support guy was supposed to be doing was getting me back in touch with my original support person.
Trust me, I have told the supervisor in no uncertain terms that everything went to ^$&* when that was done. I’d never heard of doing this before.
Once that ‘hold for 20 secs’ was done, everything changed. So bloody annoying.
Hi Eddy
You are right. They offered to walk me through the process. I’m just not sure how to format the current HDD. I know I can probably right click and then hit format, but I cannot even get to windows. All has to be done via the BIOS I guess? Or maybe go to the BIOS and tell it to boot from USB and then let Windows walk me through the process.
I have already downloaded Win 7 64 bit (ISO) to USB in preparation for the reinstall. 3gb file.
Will see how we go.
Thanks.
I am experiencing exactly the same problems with the latest version. I uninstalled Avast with Avast Clear in safe mode, reinstalled it–no help. It boots up to a black screen (resolved by a restart), then blocks (among others) cleanmgr, Task Manager, and even Sketchup. When I disable the shiieds, all these programs load perfectly.