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>Right now the laptop is not even booting up. We installed avast over several other spyware programs and could it be a conflict between them?

I doubt the exact description (conflict *between* would only happen after windoze booted) but installation may have corrupted something.
Here is the time to whip out your boot repair CD/DVD, check the HD with DOS-based tools and check the whole computer with linux.
After that try a windoze boot DVD (the old one from MS to check against virus works if you haven't built a boot disk for yourself, but it is SLOW).

Holiday time - we have 4 machines in the office with diferent troubles since last week...

regards

thomas