Avast hurt my system

[vtaRandy]

I downloaded the Avast home version and my system locked up. I have a 3 month old Dell 4550, 2.53, 1 gig ram. It locks up every time I restart. On the 3rd or 4th try it will boot completely. I am fairly new to computers so I may have done something wrong. I have Zone alarm firewall and also AVG anti-virus.

[Vlk]

AVG was active? If yes, that's the problem.

You must not have two AV programs (not only avast and AVG) running in parallel (to be more specific, their resident shields). This is almost always a recipe for disaster...

Try searching this forum for more info (collisions with Norton/Symantec AV are especially frequent).

Sorry for any trouble,
Vlk