I love Avast and have used it for at least a year (and have recommended it to clients and family+friends). I am very surprised I am having these issues and would rather have them fixed than switching to something else.
I know for fact these issues are related to Avast (because uninstalling it corrects these issues).
-Occasionally, I'll boot into a black screen. Sometimes this can be corrected by opening TaskMan with Cntrl Alt Delete menu (this still will come up during black-screen boot) and then manually running explorer.exe. However this does not always work. Usually it takes several relogs. I log in with a LOCAL profile - not a microsoft-synced profile.
-I also have an issue where the task manager will sometimes open, try to load for about 1 second, and then force itself closed. Usually after the 3rd time of doing this, the taskman will open, but it will be in the compact (dummy) view, and will say no applications are running when they clearly are, until I expand it.
-The last major bug I've found is that from the cntrl alt delete menu "failed to display security and shutdown options" error appears when I click the shutdown button in the lower righthand corner of the screen... followed by "windows logon interface host" error boxes where I'm to send errors out.
"Files that help describe the problem:
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue\AppCrash_LogonUI.exe_f53e9d6f4571ed998785d9d261565ae4693191f_cab_09cde16e\WERE0B3.tmp.appcompat.txt
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue\AppCrash_LogonUI.exe_f53e9d6f4571ed998785d9d261565ae4693191f_cab_09cde16e\WERE0C4.tmp.hdmp"
Anyways - These problems are FOR SURE related to Avast, and I have not yet discovered a way to fix them. This only seems to happen to me on Windows 8, and still occurs after full uninstalls, reinstalls (even using different installations), and I am NOT running any other Antivirus or antimalware programs.
Thank you, your input is greatly appreciated!
