I got the same proble this morning. In the event viewer, it had "error" and something about the service stopping unexpectantly.
The ball had a red slash through it.
I tried following the steps to fix it in services, but no dice.
Was it a recent update??
Anyway, after uninstalling a reinstalling, and it still not working, I uninstalled it, and downloaded it from the Avast website.
I installed, rebooted, but then it tells me my OS has been updated, and I have to reinstall Avast. That didn't work.
So, rather than go without protection, I uninstalled Avast, and installed AVG again.
Oh, BTW, i found this in event viewer:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7000
Date: 12/1/2005
Time: 10:50:03 AM
User: N/A
Computer: MASTER
Description:
The avast! Standard Shield Support service failed to start due to the following error:
Incorrect function.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
And here is the first one:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7034
Date: 12/1/2005
Time: 10:38:11 AM
User: N/A
Computer: MASTER
Description:
The avast! Antivirus service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s).
For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.