I've used Avast for a few years now, used it and recommended it and paid for the license and, until recently, have been satisfied.
Because, recently, Avast has been acting a lot like ransomware.
First it's the "Your computer is slow, give us money to fix it" adds right out of the early 2000's but the final straw was today, when the auto-renew payment, taken, "for my convenience" two weeks early, failed so, on my next reboot, I get an error message " * Critical Error * Start Menu and Cortana aren't working. We'll try to fix it the next time you sign in" and a search, no surprise, leads to uninstalling Avast to fix everything. I've run windows 10 for months now. I've added drives, configured security, even did a complete wipe and re-install of Avast in September to fix another issue.
And the only thing that changed between yesterday's normal operation and today's error was my auto-renew payment failing.
Folks, I've done tech work for 30 years and I freely and gladly give my money to companies that provide a good product and a fair business model.
That is no longer you.
I'll give my money to someone else now.
You have a nice day.
