I just installed an update to bring my Avast Free Antivirus up to version 7.0.1451. The second last step in the update process rebooted my system (an ASUS B43J notebook PC running Windows 7 Pro with 8GB of RAM, plugged into an ASUS docking station and running two Philips LCD monitors). After the reboot, and after logging into Windows, I went to a black screen where all I could see was the mouse cursor. Eventually I discovered that I could get the system to respond to Ctrl+Alt+Del and show me the typical Windows 7 Ctrl+Alt+Del screen. I tried rebooting several times in this way, always with the same result. I removed the notebook from the docking station and rebooted, again with the same result. I rebooted and re-started in Safe mode and was able to see my desktop, rebooted again in normal startup mode, again able to see my desktop, and finally shut down, re-attached to the docking station and rebooted yet again. All seems to be working fine now.
The experience was frustrating and I'm puzzled to understand why it should have happened. I looked at the KnowledgeBase and found an old article (
https://support.avast.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=229) that made reference to a similar problem installing Avast v.4 with an ASUS PC and connecting the problem to an ASUS program on the system. I don't need support with this problem as I seem to have resolved it successfully, but I did want to report it to the Avast support team.
I tried to post a support ticket but, although I'm registered and able to log in to the web site, I was unable to log in to the Submit A Ticket page (
http://support.avast.com/index.php?languageid=1&group=eng&_m=tickets&_a=submit). Again, frustrating. I see other forum users have had the same problem and have been advised to forget about submitting a ticket and just post here on the forum. I'm perfectly happy to do that (as I now have) but it leaves my wondering why bother to invite users to submit support tickets at all? Is a different login ID needed to post a ticket, or are some users blocked from posting support tickets for some reason(s) or what? It would be good to be able to understand.