David:
Thanks for the suggestion.....when one has, over the years ,made the progression from .dos2 to Windows ME you learn to be very patient and keep on trying. With the advent of helpful forums such as this however, spending untold hours trying to resolve "setting problem"as I am doing, is to me but a waste of time ...better to take advantage of someone' else's knowledge of the problem . I gladly followed your directives and after accessing Menu and then help, a small screen popped up with Avast 4 in the upper left hand corner followed on the next line by three boxes reading, contents, search, display...followed by an insert box reading" avast.help.user interface" in blue.....
clicking enter did not generate any further screens. So once again I am stumped and not for lack of trying. I hope you can tell me where I am going wrong!