Is there a fix for the problem (described below) where windows xp (in my case 64bit with all patches) freezes on reboot after updating to avast free version 2014.9.0.2011? thanks for any help or advice anyone can give.
yesterday i updated to 2014.9.0.2011 (after being nagged to do so by the program) on my pc machine with XP SP3 64 bit. once finished i rebooted, as asked, but my pc got hung up on reboot after the windows splash screen with a black screen, before the user login screen was reached. (the mouse arrow was visible and movable, but no other response). the computer hung at this point indefinitely.
after googling the problem i found some postings from november about a similar problem. i was able to reboot in safe mode and followed advice in these posts which allowed me to roll back to the previous version successfully, which solved the immediate reboot problem. however i am worried about updating again until i'm sure there is a fix.
(for those with a similar problem, to get a reboot i renamed the file aswSP.sys (eg to aswSP.sys.bak) that is in the folder windows/system32/drivers, and rebooted. this seems to have been the problem file, since then it rebooted, although slowly. once rebooted i uninstalled avast (again in safe mode) and then reinstalled the previous version of avast (2014.9.0.2008), and all problems then vanished. i then did a complete scan but avast found no viruses.)