Avast Anti-Virus - Is it Safe?

reboot in safe mode, uninstall Avast to see if that fixes your problem. If it does, try Microsoft security essentials. It's pretty lightweight and doesn't bog down my pc's

http://www.avast.com/uninstall-utility

ok...take a look at Avira...the best antivirus around

As have said many times before...
I would never use any free security downloaded from the internet.
I recommend you use only a professional all in one security product.
There have been many reports of these free security downloads damaging systems.
Including YOUR report. You are not the first person to post this problem.
(you are not the only victim, just the latest victim)

Delete what you installed. (if you can)
Well, at least one person understands why you should not download this stuff.

You "might" be able to use system restore
to turn the hard drive back to the time before you installed AVAST.

Avast is a nice security suite. It has various mechanisms for Trojan horses, Malware, Worm etc. You can use it undoubtedly.

Strange then that Avast scores quite highly on AV Comparatives, AV-Test, VB100, ICSA Labs and West Coast Labs routinely out-scoring several well known pay products, and their Android product is rated top at present by several independent Android commentators as well as the above testing institutes . It out-performs MSE by a country mile as far as detection and repair is concerned. Norton maybe a top 5 product but the absolute best? Debatable. GDATA routinely comes out in the top 2, which uses the Avast detection engine as well as the Bitdefender engine.

There is also the question as to why Symantec pulled their product from AV-Comparatives for 2012, something that they have participated in for quite a while and often swapped the top position with Bitdefender and GDATA during 2011 testing. Perhaps Symantec are not as confident in their 2012 product as their 2011 offering.

I disagree, security should be taken in a layered approach, while all-in-one products are likely more financially viable and easier for the average end user to administer they do have one disadvantage, a common code base, an exploit aimed to attack one part could bring the whole thing down like a house of cards.

Best answer selected by tchroftchrs.