Learning from me?
I'm not a teacher
But let me try to tell the logic behind this problem (solving)
Curious results?
Not really.
Computers/software are very complicated things with as it seems for humans a unlimited of combinations.
Even literally 1 bit that should be a 1 but is a 0 can give huge problems.
How this happens?
Just a really tiny change in power or a resistor that goes over it's fault tolerance...
The "side-to-side configuration is incorrect" gave away a (huge) clue on the cause of your problem.
To say it simple:
It means two (or more) things have a problem with each other.
We (you) know that avast is having a problem, that is one of the two.
So we have to find out what the other one is.
Since you updated avast, it is not likely that the cause is (remnants of) another av.
If that was the case, you very likely would have experienced problems before the update also.
You did perform the remove/clean installation procedure.
That (almost?) always rules out something went wrong during the installation of avast.
Ok, so what do we have left as possible causes (the second thing)?
Well we have hardware and software.
Let's see if it is the hardware.
No, not likely or you you very likely would experience problems with other software too.
What is left is software.
I make a difference here between the OS and installed applications.
Can installed applications be the second thing?
Sure, but not likely since the previous version of avast was working fine and you did not mention problems with a other application.
Ok, we have narrowed down to a likely cause, namely the operating system.
avast (as many other applications) need several things to be able to run.
One of them is the Visual c++ runtime properly installed and working.
A non properly working Visual c++ runtime is known for causing the "side-to-side configuration is incorrect" error.
I know that not everything is (technical) correct as I told above, but I have tried to explain it in a way many people can understand/can get a clue on how things work.