[...] As I mentioned in some previous posts... all I did on the day before the problem occurred was a full system scan with Avast!, a scan with Malwarebytes 1.75 and a system defrag and the next day I woke up and restarted it was like this.
I assume the AV scans did not find/remove anything?
I tried the scannow command, it didn't find any integrity violations. :\
Always a good thing to eliminate though...
Running out of ideas... I've tried most of the more simple tests and such, such as disabling firewalls, changing stuff in msconfig (only 5 system tray programs anyway so not much), fully reinstalling Avast! (Using the avastclear.exe) which removes it completely AFAIK and just installed it again, no change.
(Not that it would make a difference to your problem, but the best way to uninstall it is in SafeMode...)
Just wondering if you happen to have system restore turned on and would be able to return to a prior restore point... like one before the defrag. Some defrag programs create a system restore point before running, or you might have created one recently.
To check for restore points:
Orb -> Control Panel -> System -> then click the System Protection hyperlink for the Sys Restore window to open.
Here you can see if Sys Restore is turned on for the C drive, and if it is, clicking on the System Restore button will make another window popup. From there click "Choose a different restore point" at the bottom of that window, then click NEXT to see a list of all the restore points available. Now you can see what dates they were created, and if one is available for Oct 7 or before, try it. (If any software was installed after the restore point was made, it will have to be reinstalled, but data will not be affected.)
As I said though, the most odd thing to me about this whole thing is the fact that the program still appears to be sorta normal offline...
That would appear to be because it is one of the processes in AVAST that uses network services that is causing the problem or experiencing the conflict or hiccup. When offline, those processes aren't running.
I've even done things such as a disc drive error check etc but it's all been inconclusive.
You mean you did chkdsk? (i.e. had Windows check the integrity of the hard disk) ... what was "inconclusive" about the check?
I assume you haven't noticed any other irregularities since the scan/defrag? No keyboard lagging, or sluggishness... anything at all out of the ordinary in your other programs?