I am not able to open desktop folders or eject external hard drives. I have an IMac 21.5 2019. Nothing responding

The best antivirus, cleaning app, and overall maintenance app for Mac OS is Mac OS itself. All you need to do with Mac OS to keep it secure and running well is to keep it up-to-date and do periodic (about 1x per week) restarts. Other than that, leave it alone. Adding third party antivirus, cleaning, security and other types of maintenance apps to Mac OS adds no additional level of security. The only thing these apps do is to have the opposite affect users want. They make Mac OS slow, unstable, generate odd behavior (much like you are experiencing) and make Mac OS appear buggy.

Please locate the developers uninstall instructions for Avast and follow to the letter. Then restart in Safe Mode per the directions in Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac and then restart normally.

You can save both you and us a lot of time and effort if you do the following:

Please navigate to the Mac App Store or navigate to www.Etrecheck.com and download the free version of EtreCheck. Once you have you downloaded the app and installed it, please run the report and save it. This report will help us get a good idea what has been installed on your system and help us be able to diagnose what may be wrong.

When you have your report, you can attach it when you reply to this message and we can then review it and help you determine what is needed to get your system running well again.

For instructions on how to download your EtreCheck report and attach it to your reply to this message please click https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250000211