kalest, the Avira forum is buzzing with the problem causing exactly the symptoms you describe. I cannot say Avira has dealt with this admirably.
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If people have been running Avira this month and haven't experienced these problems, they probably don't need to bother with any of this.]
This problem first appeared directly after Avira's release of Service Pack 1, on Nov. 2nd. Many people report that it's only occurring on systems with XP SP3, and I haven't seen anyone report a contradiction to this. Quite a few instances have been reported in which Avira was isolated as the cause, or more specifically, Avira with the SP 1 update.
A couple of computer repair pros report that on the affected computers they diagnosed, it varied the length of time different computers would be up and running, before this deterioration you're describing, starts occurring. In the case of my computer, it's probably about 6-7 hours of active computer use, before the deterioration starts occurring (it doesn't seem to happen when the computer's sitting on but inactive). I've been needing to reboot every few hours, to prevent a recurrence.
I was "fortunate," in that I was able to quickly track down the cause of the problems. I was horrified when I saw my system becoming literally more unresponsive and dsyfunctional by the second. But either the first or second symptom (I forget) I observed, was that Avira wouldn't update and gave a strange error message. I was scared to reboot, but past a point, I could only do that or let the computer sit there. As you say, text stopped displaying, it would not even bring up Task Manager, wouldn't launch programs, and lost display of basic command buttons. However, when I logged back on, there were no symptoms. I immediately ran every scan I have, and all came up clean.
I next went to search for the symptoms online, especially including "Avira," as a term, but didn't know the keyword language to describe them. The first language I found that sounded like my problem was, "problems with the systems paged pool," and found posts collecting from users on the Avira forum.
Early on, one of Avira's tech had said the paid version didn't have the problem and suggested uninstalling Avira's free program and installing the 30-day free trial of the paid version. However, I think that since then, the paid version's been reported to have the problem. You'd have to check this.
Solutions I've seen offered so far, pending Avira developing and releasing a fix for problems caused by the Service Pack 1 update:
My own suggestion, though I'm not crazy about needing to do it: according to how frequently your computer is breaking down, you could try what I've been doing, close all programs and reboot, more frequently than it takes the problem to develop, in your observation.
Install Avira 9 or 10 versions, pre-Service Pack 1: I think you need to first uninstall your current Avira.
In order to prevent Avira installing the Service Pack 1 update to your newly-downloaded Avira, you can disable Product Update, but leave antivirus definition updates enabled. To do this:
Right click on the Avira icon, select Configure Antivir
Select Expert Mode, then Update, then Product Update
Check Do not download product updates, click Apply, then Okay
I've read somewhere on their forum that simply unchecking Antivir Guard enable, will not prevent the problem, and of course, it leaves your computer unprotected.
As much as I appreciate using Avira and all their good work, Avira has been very poor at addressing this problem. Were they to at least announce it prominently, acknowledge it, and describe the symptoms being reported, they would have saved many people hours of effort trying to diagnose the problem, and even the expense of paying an expert to diagnose it.
As it is, they make it difficult to find this information. They haven't made an announcement about it on their forum announcements section or blog. The most they've done is answer a few of the many, many posts to their forum, and leave users to piece things together by reading each other's threads.
