A heart felt thanks to Avast for restoring my computer back to normal working condition.
The computer got to the stage that it would take up to 3 minutes to open a folder on the desktop, I could not access Control Panel (something about explorer.exe encountering a problem and has to shutdown).
The computer finally locked up and when I used the reset button I lost my wireless connection, I finally got back on line after contacting the wireless modem supplier to find out my keycode for the router (I forgot that it generated a hexcode key from my password ?)
I reloaded Windows XP several times (using the second repair option in the install process) but to no avail (I have XP home installed and a second CD to load SP2).
At the time when this started I had Nortons virus protector running (and up to date) with Registry Mechanic checking every time I started the computer.
I tried Spybot, Spyware Doctor, Ad-Aware SE Personal, SpywareBlaster and AVG all to no avail then I heard of someone else who had had similiar problems and was told that the only program he could find that identified the problems was Avast. I managed to get on line and download Avast albeit very slowly.
Near the end of this download I was told the download had encountered a problem and I should empty my temporary file in my browser. But a virus check started and identified several problem files (2 of which were Norton files) a file table was corrupt along with others, I put all the ones that could not be repaired into the vault. (Thinking to check them later).
When the Avast control panel came up it would not work regardless of which options I tried so I then emptied the temporary file in my web browser and went to reload Avast but was told I would have to uninstall the existing copy first, I did this and then reloaded Avast and the control panel worked fine but when I went to have a look at what files had been stored in the vault the vault was empty so I could not identify which files were corrupted !!!
I checked the Nortons Recycle Bin but to no avail ??
While I think the Avast program is the best thing since sliced bread I feel that it would be great if a small note on the download site alerted people to first empty their browsers temporary files before they start to download Avast and then they will not loose important corrupt file information from the vault like I did.
