Ok i think things got a lot worse...i did the uninstall again just to make sure, i unplugged the internet, uninstalled avast with add/remove program, rebooted into safe mode, ran the aswclear5, after that said everything has been removed, a window popped up it was registry mechanic saying its going to monitor something...i went into settings said to disable. I installed avast, rebooted, now i have icons in my tray that i dont recognize...linksys easylink advisor, msn video enchanced- ready, morgan multimedia codec- enabled, morgan multimedia m-jpeg2000 codec- enabled, then an icon saying not sharing any content, and now windows security alert says the firewall has been turned off. All these icons were not there before.