No luck.
I uninstalled Avast. Rebooted. Then ran the aswclear.exe utility. Rebooted. Used CCCleaner to remove any registry references to Avast. Then regedit to manually search the registry to be sure no remnants were left. Then re-installed the new build without any skins. And the issue persists.
As administrator everything works as it should. But as a local user, only the context scan and the system tray functions work. The desktop or start menu shortcut to Avast (ashavast.exe) will not open, freezes the CPU at 99%, and because the process can't be killed, the only solution is a reboot. (Not very practical.)
Before the reboot occurs, there is an indication that Active Skin Helper cannot shut down. Perhaps this is a natural outcome of the stalled process.
When I check the security settings of the actual Avast.exe file, it indicates Read as well as Read and Execute for ALL USERS.
When I check the Properties / Compatibility of Avast.exe, the "Run this program in compatibility mode" box is NOT checked. Were you suggesting that it should be as the program is running on XP Pro SP2, and not a previous OS.
If I use the "Run As" administrator command on the local user desktop icon, it will open perfectly. So it surely seems to me that this is a privilege related issue.
Are there any known conflicts that would cause such an issue, and don't the Avast techs have any idea of what to look at as there are NO system anomalies aside from this local user issue after installing Avast?