Hi - completely new poster - in desperation of my current plight I stumbled on this site. I would like to share my experience and perhaps even seek advice on fixing a problem.
Yesterday evening using my personal laptop at home I reacted to a prompt from my machine concerning Avast updates - I have in the past used the free service but I have also previously purchased the 'improved' and more singing and dancing version(s) of Avast. In a moment of weakness I decided to invest my money and downloaded the Avast Premium.
It promised to improve the performance of my machine by sending to sleep programs that it considered where infrequently used - or at least that's what I thought it said. I pressed the buttons and allowed it to weave its magic; I recall it advised that anything in sleep mode -whenever I clicked on these programs in future they would awake. Seemed very sensible. A clock like a rev counter on a performance car showed my 'performance improved from 58 into the 80's when it was done. I thought that's awesome!
Unfortunately when I had finished and actually wanted to use my laptop for something else nothing would work.
I restarted there times, waited and nothing improved: clicking on any program would do nothing anymore - I saw dialogue boxes with menus where before the program just worked with one click - but of course selecting anything from these menu's did not work either. I managed to open a document, but I could do nothing with it and it would not close. Even trying to close the machine - I had to press and hold the on off switch for it to all die.
Rev counter - the wheels have come off my computer! But like a fool, it took me until this morning to realize what Avast had done - I really never would have believed I manged to get by with a free version of Avast I invest in the Premium version and it bites me in the ass..
I'm not a computer techie person but searching during my lunchbreak at work, for why this was happening - as soon as I mentioned Avast in my searches I noticed bits of threads from 12 months ago - with people experiencing exactly my problem.
The sad thing is the replies from Avast on these forums show that although Avast know about this problem a year has past and not only have they not been able to fix it, they are still selling it with the same problem!!
Avast if you are there - advise on how I can fix this and then how I can get a refund. FYI I can open my machine as normal I can even open the avast program but that's as far as it will go - clicking on the speed up icon or anything else as no effect. Same goes for everything else anything that responds will take you in perhaps two or three levels when it comes to clicking on the button that will actually get something to start is not possible. I have pressed F8 when booting up and this fails to work, (trying to start in safe mode). Task Manger same - not responding.