Since I hadn't tried using safe mode before I don't know what or why it didn't open when I pressed F8 during each reboot during attempts to first fix the problem I was having.
After each attempt to reinstall avast I know it sets a restore point and maybe that's how it got lodged in there..but I ran a drweb scan on the advice of a friend and it found and removed the culprits from some files and showed it to be in the system restore as well.. and then I turned off restore and rebooted before turning it back on.
Since running dr web scan and starting the restore point anew, the f8 key now did bring up the windows advanced options menu with the safe mode option!!
This is a great community here..thank you all for your offers and suggestions to help fix these problems.