Hello readers.  I'm new to PC Pals - hope I'm posting this in the right place.  Can anybody advise me on the following?  After uninstalling free trial anti-virus software from my PC, I attempted to restart, but without success.  Numerous attempts have brought the same result: a blue screen with the message that an error has occurred.  It instructs me to press 'return' to 'return to Windows'.  If I do this, nothing happens.  It instructs me to 'press any key to continue'.  If I do this, I get a plain black screen and nothing else.  During one attempt to restart, a window opened with this message: 'sntsvc has caused an error in KRNL386.EXE'.  Then the whole PC simply froze.  Blue Yonder (who provide my broadband connection) have advised me to ring Microsoft's helpline.  But if anybody out there can offer any advice (in layman's terms only, please - I'm no expert!) I would be immensely grateful.  It may be a couple of days before I can check back in again as, obviously, I'm having to use a friend's computer to do so at the moment.  Hope to hear from you soon!  Best wishes, Jon.

Hi Jon and  

I'm not a techie, but what I would suggest for starters is to try booting up in safe mode by pressing F8 as you boot, and then attempting a system restore to a time before you loaded the free AVG onto your machine.  Let us know how you get on with that.

Thanks for the prompt replies and advice; help appreciated.  I'm away from home for a few days so I shan't be able to try that for a short while.  The only problem I foresee is that I'm pretty sure that the PC's previous owner had disabled System Restore as an anti-virus measure.  Any idea how else you would go about getting out of Safe Mode?

I've never had cause to use Safe Mode, so I assumed it had to be activated/deactivated.  So I can just restart to return to Normal?  (Thanks for the advice)

The way I read it is that Jon can no longer get into Windows which is why I suggested Safe Mode and System Restore.  To get into Safe Mode you have to keep tapping the F8 key while the computer is booting up.  You won't be able to access the Internet in Safe Mode but I think you can re-install the AVG from CD and see if Simon's idea works for you.

Success!  I followed Clive's initial advice.  The software had not been successfully uninstalled.  Now it's fully removed, my PC is functioning again.  Many thanks to you all for your advice; it's much appreciated.  Best wishes, Jon.