I've had my Vista OS glitch at least twice with avast. The first time it wouldn't boot, similar to the OP.
Essexboy gave me a script to run in FRST that disabled the avast services. Right after that, Vista started normally
and I was able to complete the clean-up of avast. Afterwards, installed the latest version, and it ran OK for a couple of weeks...
until there were some windows updates. I could tell there was something wrong because normally when it asks you to reboot to complete
then updates, it always gives you a little count down percentage, and likewise when it starts back up. This time there was no countdown %,
and the desktop looked like Windows 2000 when it came up.
I was unable to resolve the situation, except that uninstalling avast returned Vista back to normal operation.
The question that has not satisfactorily been answered is why is it occurring? For now, on this OS,
I have left avast uninstalled, and have put back MSE for the time being.
This issue has never occurred on my XP boxes.
