Avast Internet Security....

Never start a vast project with half-vast protection....

Nor with an expensive program that loses one of its essential components, in this case its aswAux.dll and can't start at all, after beginning one of its own routine 'program upgrade' updates. After rummaging around here finding my account log-in details, and then downloading a fresh version, on the advice of the little pop-up I got after the failure was announced, and then installing it, and then re-configuring it for how it was set before all this hit the fan, I'm an hour and a half older, and polite English can't adequately express the full depth of my feelings about all that. So you'll just have to imagine that part.

Let's say my tenuous magnanimity has been irreparably discombobulated, and I cleaned that one up more than you can imagine.