I believe I have to respond to some of the stuff said. First to Techie101:
I have been involved in developing programmes of considerably higher complexity than Avast - admittedly not in the direct coding but in the managing of the product in the field. So I believe that I am pretty much in the loop there - some of the stuff we put out secured the national bank - interbank transfers - so I REALLY understand the consequences of a screwup - because when it went wrong , my phone rang!
As to the workaround vs solution - OK, but will someone put up his hand and SAY that the problem is being looked at? All I got was - well try this delay startup app to solve the problem (it didnt, NT did not like it at all!)
As to the question on Services and Controller app and the Distr Com serv, this is the first time I received any answer whatsoever - and I have asked the question some 3 or 4 times previously I believe? Maybe now you can understand my frustration? In the meantime because it seemed to me that Avast would not perform any updates with them switched "off", I have been running with reduced firewall security. I will disable them and lets see if Avast is able to connect - my take is that it won't. I dont think I can physically limit either of them to just associate with Avast btw - I will take another look but so far have not found a way to do that.
And yes - now I have received support - my point is I had to put in an RPG to get the answers!
As to the product - I said it before - its a good product, but please read the above and my previous notes carefully which is why I said the support is not answering the questions. This could be my fault for not setting out my questions in a brutal fashion - I don't know? In a way I do sympathise a lot with the support side - you now have at least 6 lousy Windows OS's to deal with!
I did read through a zillion posts at Wilder as per suggestion but didnt find any shining light there I am afraid.