Blue Screen of Death.

it could be the combination of Comodo AND Avast causing the problem.
have you tried uninstalling Comodo and see if the problem persist?

no matter, i'm glad you're all sorted out!

 

Interesting update Amiga. I think I've already mentioned that I used the Comodo/Avast combo in the past and it worked really well until I got hit with lots of blue screens. Initially I didn't think it was either of them. In February, I got about 6 blue screens in a couple of days. This started after I installed Linux Mint 13 (dual booting) and I stupidly forgot to defrag my hard drive. I did a fresh reinstall and even then I got a couple more blue screens.

Things were much calmer for a few weeks and then I started using AirVPN and I got three blue screens in one day and I complained to the guys at Air and they said they'd look into it. The blue screens happened 1-2 times a week up to the point I contacted Dell as I've got support and they said it could be a gpu problem. They replaced the GPU and HD and I did another fresh reinstall (yes I've not learned the lesson of keeping a back up image) and I put various programs back on and I had a blue screen again. After that ComodoFW was very difficult always freezing and forcing me to restart my pc. I decided to drop Comodo and my problems stopped. I also had difficulties with the Avast mail shield stopping me from sending emails and I had to drop that particular shield too. I still use all my other programs and have no problems.

I'm certainly not looking to blame Comodo or Avast. I know a good friend in particular who uses both with no problems but both at their default settings. I messed around an awful lot with Comodo setting HIPS to the Paranoid setting and changing the other defaults to make it more proactive. Clearly somewhere along the line something went very wrong on my system and I don't know what caused it but I know it's okay now. I think Comodo and Avast bringing out new versions is probably a big factor and while both are free, both want you to buy their complete package.