Had to uninstall Avast to fix issue..

[tvtoms]

Hi. A few days ago my win 7 machine wasn't responding in the morning so I was forced to hit the power button. After repeat lock-ups in identical fashion, I entered windows safe mode and noticed the machine was then stable. After selective boots with more and more things being removed until I only had Avast going, I went ahead and used the Avast Repair option. No luck, so I continued on and did a full uninstall of Avast. Windows now boots and behaves absolutely normally.

Avast was up to date and I've been using it for what I guess is around 15 years maybe. 10 anyway. I still have avast on my ancient laptop running windows xp, but I'm definitely shy about reinstalling it on this machine as it was really running the hard drive non-stop in whatever loop it was stuck in. Just thought I'd mention it.

[mchain]

Something to consider: 

• Avast real-time scanner does scan files as they are opened when Windows starts, and can scan several threads at once
• Your hard drive could be beginning to show signs of failure

Use this clean-up tool to completely remove any Avast remnants:  https://www.avast.com/uninstall-utility

Use this site to remove any old antivirus program installations here:  https://support.avast.com/en-ww/article/11/#artTitle  (Original antivirus programs that came with system when new need to be completely removed for example)

Reboot.

What antivirus program are you running now?  You've Windows 7 SP1?