Hello,
I'm using Avast Free Antivirus (latest version) on Windows 10 x64. My situation is the following:
Yesterday afternoon I suddenly started experiencing an awkward problem - when I right-clicked an object, Windows Explorer suddenly froze (it didn't happen every time, I'd say it was random). I've been using Avast Free Antivirus for years and such thing had never happened to me before. I decided to put "symptoms" in Google and what it said was it might be a problem with shell extensions. As advised, I downloaded the ShellExView and did the test (disabling the extensions and seeing which might be xausing problems). To my surprise, it turns out that the Avast Context Menu is the culprit. After I disabled it, the problem seems to disappear. I thought that it is impossible that the Antivirus is causing such problem and reinstalled it. After the reinstall the problem started occuring again, and it disappeared after I disabled the Avast Context Menu.
And here comes my question:
Can I keep the Avast Context Menu (and Icon Overlay Handler - when the Context Menu is disabled, automatically so is the Icon Overlay Handler) disabled? Is it safe? Will Avast still be running in the background and I will be provided the same level of protection as before?
Thank you in advance for your answers.