I don't remember if I ever got all the way to the desktop again sometimes the 'Click on your user name' screen would freeze in place. The next few times I tried restarting, I couldn't get far enough to disable or uninstall Avast before the computer would lock up again. I moved it out of the way under the taskbar and tried to continue, but soon got the usual lockup symptoms again. I tried to X the popup closed but it didn't respond. Avast apparently took that as an invitation to upgrade itself to 7 next I knew, it was showing me the same 'Complete your upgrade to Avast! 7' popup where the trouble had started. Since I'd already paid for Avast 6, I inserted the key they'd given me, hoping that would give me the paid version of Avast 6. During installation it offered me a choice of the free or the paid version. I uninstalled Avast and downloaded an older version (6 something). That way I could use the Internet long enough to establish that similar problems are already being reported elsewhere: When I got a chance, I opened Avast and disabled all the 'shields'. When the computer restarts I'm likely to get another lockup early on, sometimes on an empty desktop (background color but no icons), sometimes not till I'm already in my browser. To get out of this mode, I have to lean on the power on-off switch for about 5 seconds. When I clicked the 'Finish' button, my computer locked up and it's been doing it ever since at various points.ĭuring this kind of lockup, the mouse cursor still responds to mouse movement but neither mouse clicks nor key presses seem to have any effect.

It looked something like the one shown in except without the Google Chrome stuff. The next time I restarted the computer, I got an 'Upgrade to Avast 7' popup. It said I'd have to restart my computer to complete the installation I opted to restart later. A day or so ago it offered to update to Avast 7 and I accepted. I'd been using Avast 6 (Internet Security, or whatever the paid version is called) for about a month with no problems.

Avast locking up computer