Yesterday afternoon at around 15:00, after what appeared to have been an upgrade in avast 8, i got the dreaded BSOD x50 when rebooting. Could not even get into safe mode anymore. Took me 8 hours to get recover into safe mode.
Finally one hour ago (!) I was able to run a Whocrashed report:
On Fri 28/06/2013 04:14:19 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\windows\Minidump\062813-5850-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C00)
Bugcheck code: 0x50 (0xFFFFF8000622E400, 0x8, 0xFFFFF8000622E400, 0x2)
Error: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
file path: C:\windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that invalid system memory has been referenced.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.
On Fri 28/06/2013 04:14:19 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\windows\memory.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: aswsp.sys (aswSP+0x42ABE)
Bugcheck code: 0x50 (0xFFFFF8000622E400, 0x8, 0xFFFFF8000622E400, 0x2)
Error: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
file path: C:\windows\system32\drivers\aswsp.sys
product: avast! Antivirus
company: AVAST Software
description: avast! self protection module
Bug check description: This indicates that invalid system memory has been referenced.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.
A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error. It is suggested you look for an update for the following driver: aswsp.sys (avast! self protection module, AVAST Software).
Google query: AVAST Software PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
Needless to say I have since reverted to good old avast 7 and disabled automatic program updates. Looks like I am one amongst many, many others with this problem.
Learnt a lot from this experience, don't want to go through this again EVER!