How do I know if the Resident Protection is on?
Do you have a blue 'a' icon in the system tray
without a red cross in it?
When I access the "Simple User Interface" it shows it's off.
Where? Can you post a screenshot?
Which provider is off?
If I set it to "standard" or "high" is it now running?
Maybe... Depends on what do you answered in the first question.
Do you have a process called ashServ.exe running? (click ctrl+alt+del to see).
How do I have it run automatically?
If you don't mess your installation, running automatically is the default.
You will see some avast! services running automatically on Windows XP start.
The other three are not running:
Antivirus
Mail Scanning
Web Scanner
Did you boot after the installation? Do you have (or had in the past) any other antivirus in this machine?
All four services are set to start automatically.
Strange, Mail service should be configurated to 'manual' start... Did you change it?