Thanks very much man! PC seems to be back up and running again. Am in process of uploading all my important docs and photos etc to the cloud and will make sure to keep regular system images and backups handy!!

Managed to uninstall avast fully and it is now reinstalled and fingers crossed won’t cause any more problems.

Thanks for your help and if you have any more tips on how to stop it happening I’d be grateful to hear them.

Happy New Year

DT