On Feb 24, 12:09 pm, "riverman" wrote:
I have had Trend Mico installed for several years, but about six weeks
ago it just stopped working. Some error message saying a required .dll
file was missing or something (a day earlier, the system had frozen
while installing upgrades...I figured it was the cause).

Anyway, I uninstalled Trend Micro after trying for a day to
troubleshoot it, and installed the freeware version of Avast!

For the most part, it seems okay, but twice now (the second occurrance
was about 5 minutes ago), I suddenly get a truckload of Explorer
windows opening up. It got up to about 45 of them before I got the
computer forced off, and restarted.

Three questions:
1) What the hell is going on?
2) Is there an easier way to stop this process other than holding down
the 'on' button until it shuts down? It seems that this is a pretty
unsophisticated way to do it.
3) Is this malware, that Avast is not intercepting? Any other Avast
users had this happen?

If this is a bug getting through the firewall, then I want a different
antivirus program.

--riverman

By the way, holding down Ctrl-Alt-Del should normally bring up your
task manager, and allow you to shut down the program, it will also
tell you which programs are are actually running. This does not always
work perfectly though. If in doubt, shut the machine down.

You may find this useful, also works perfectly and is free;
http://www.iobit.com/

advanced windows care, the freebie.

before you run any of these, get this and run it;
http://www.ccleaner.com/

TL
MC