Avast WEBforum

Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: gemcnamara on January 05, 2010, 12:11:53 AM

Title: Can't register
Post by: gemcnamara on January 05, 2010, 12:11:53 AM
My antivirus subscription has expired.  I have the free Home Edition and have tried several times to re-register.  The first few tries I couldn't get the re-registration page to confirm.  The last couple time it confirmed that I would be receiving an e-mail, but I never received one (it's been more than 24 hours).  I have added the e-mail address to my allowed senders, and did not have any trouble getting an e-mail from Avast! when I registered for this forum, so don't think the e-mail is being blocked.

I've spent a couple days trying to re-register, and this is really getting annoying.  Any suggestions.  It would be a real pain for me to have to download the 39 mb program, and I am on dial-up and doing that would take about 5 hours.

Thanks for your help! 
Title: Re: Can't register
Post by: spg SCOTT on January 05, 2010, 12:37:33 AM
Hi gemcnamara, welcome to the forum :)

Does the secure registration page work?
https://secure.avast.com/web/eng/home-registration.php
Click on My registration key has expired, I need a new one

Also if that doesn't work, you could try using a different email provider as some ISPs etc. block mail as spam...GMail or Yahoo often works well.

-Scott-
Title: Re: Can't register
Post by: Gopher John on January 05, 2010, 12:41:17 AM
When I received my registration in 2008, the email address was register@avast.com.  The one in 2009 came from register@register.avast.com.

The forum messages that inform you of a reply to a subscribed thread comes from "avast!WEBforum" <webadmin@asw.cz>.

All these would have to be whitelisted.  I use a free GMail account for forums and such.  GMail's spam filter is extremely accurate, but if there is a bad classification the message can be reclassified by the account holder from the Spam folder and retrieved.  I don't use whitelists for email since a couple of people I regularly receive email from got infected by a trojan that sent out spam using their email client's address book.  It was easy for a human to spot, but whitelisting their email address would have bypassed the spam filters.
Title: Re: Can't register
Post by: gemcnamara on January 05, 2010, 01:00:49 AM
Scott - thanks for the reply.  That's the page I tried to register from.

Gopher John - I have register@register.avast.com whitelisted.  Nothing.  I don't want to go to the trouble of setting up an e-mail account through another provider just for this.  I've never had any problems like this before.  If it's this hard just to re-register, I think I might be looking for another virus protection provider..... :(
Title: Re: Can't register
Post by: Gopher John on January 05, 2010, 01:21:58 AM
Good luck in finding one that can get past your email spam settings. ;D

If the registration page indicated that it accepted your registration, then either you entered your email address wrong in the form or a spam filter grabbed it away from you.  You can't blame Alwil for either.
Title: Re: Can't register
Post by: gemcnamara on January 05, 2010, 01:29:21 AM
Thanks Gopher John - not trying to blame anyone here, just trying to understand!  If I have added the address that the confirmation is to come from to my approved list, why would my spam filter pick it up? And if it did, wouldn't it go into my spam folder? 

I've had avast! at least a couple of years, and don't recall having any problems in the past.  I really like it, and want to keep it.  How would I go about setting up a gmail account?
Title: Re: Can't register
Post by: Gopher John on January 05, 2010, 03:13:55 AM
Unless your email provider is also doing some unannounced prefiltering, whitelisting the various avast email addresses should prevent it being designated as spam.  OTOH, when I was on dialup, messages wouldn't be received that I knew weren't spam nor infected and they were silently deleted on the ISP's server based on IP ranges, as I'd sent them to myself thru a different provider.

To sign up for a GMail account go to http://www.google.com/ (http://www.google.com/) and click on the GMail link at the top.  GMail offers webmail, POP3 and SMTP servers as well as IMAP.  Read http://mail.google.com/support/ (http://mail.google.com/support/) on setting up your email client, as the servers require SSL.
Title: Re: Can't register
Post by: DavidR on January 05, 2010, 03:38:00 AM
In the time taken discussing why you don't want to go to the trouble of creating a new email account, you could have set up a free webmail account.

That is normally what I suggest when email hasn't been received as this has worked for those that tried it. Yahoo or GMail would be just as good and using webmail wouldn't require that you have to setup accounts in your email program.

Not only that it gives some ammunition to go back to your ISP if it works for Yahoo, confirms that the registration process worked and the email was sent, yet it didn't when going to your regular email address.
Title: Re: Can't register
Post by: Achilles61 on January 05, 2010, 03:58:28 AM
My antivirus subscription has expired.  I have the free Home Edition and have tried several times to re-register.  The first few tries I couldn't get the re-registration page to confirm. 

I've just had the same issue. Firefox and IE both just reload the page. I had thought I'd missed an important detail, but everything is filled in. I haven't yet had the confirmation, and I'm wondering whether the University firewall might have something to do with it. Doesn't really make a lot of sense, but I've seen it make a mess of other things. The email for registering on this forum came through ok (obviously  :))
Title: Re: Can't register
Post by: gemcnamara on January 07, 2010, 12:08:34 AM
THANKS GopherJohn and DavidM.  You were right.  I was wrong.  I set up a gmail account and had my registration key in 30 minutes.

Just posting this for anyone else who may be trying to save some time!   ;D
Title: Re: Can't register
Post by: DavidR on January 07, 2010, 01:02:14 AM
You're welcome from DavidR ;D

It isn't about being right or wrong, more trying to pin down where the problem lies and in this instance there would appear to be an anti-spam filter at your ISP or rather their email server/s blocking the email.
Title: Re: Can't register
Post by: Gopher John on January 07, 2010, 01:17:39 AM
You're welcome. :)

Perhaps your regular email provider uses SpamAssassin, which has had a date glitch on the year 2010.  See https://issues.apache.org/SpamAssassin/show_bug.cgi?id=6269 (https://issues.apache.org/SpamAssassin/show_bug.cgi?id=6269).  Apache has a fix for it now.  The additional 3.188 spam score points may have pushed the registration message into spam range. ???