On Jan. 4, I opened Avast Free and noticed that a new update to the program was available. I installed it and upon rebooting, my entire computer was disabled. As soon as the desktop displayed, an error message (something to the effect that "no disk can be found") appeared and locked the whole system. Each time I rebooted, the same message reappeared and prevented any further actions. Even in Safe Mode, the same message and locked system. After struggling for a long time, I called in my computer techie, who spent almost two hours working on my computer before getting it up and running again.
The new update was clearly responsible. When he attempted to look at the Windows log file, he discovered that the system locked before anything could be recorded to account for the problem. The update had apparently added two "weird" registry entries (that was my techie's description) that displayed only as special characters (specifically, boxes). He removed them, rebooted, and they reappeared. Then he uninstalled Avast completely, deleted the reappearing registry entries, and rebooted. My system was back. He DLed a clean copy of the new Avast, installed it, rebooted, and again, a totally locked up computer and again the two "weird" registry entries that were apparently at the heart of the problem. The only way to get my system running again was to delete the new version of Avast and the registry entries and then revert to the previous version of Avast (5.0.677).
My question is has this problem (whatever it was) been solved in the last couple of weeks? Did others go through the same ordeal I did? And is it worth a gamble to install the update now? I do like Avast and would like to keep it up to date, but I don't want my system crippled again.
(I'm running Windows XP Pro, btw.)
