Terminate the Outlook/Exchange provider, this is for MS Outlook (not express), the message relates to 'waiting for MS Outlook to start' so it will wait some time.
Did you run the Mail Protection Wizard ?
You need to do that to have avast modify the OE6 account settings to use the Internet Mail proxy. If run the account settings should look something like this.
With Win95, Win98 or WinME you should have:
pop3 server= smtp server = 127.0.0.1
username = mail.server.coml#user or mail.server.com#user@server.com
smtp authentication enabled and the username there = mail.server.coml#user or mail.server.com#user@server.com
Check out the avast Help file, Setting up the Mail Protection, Manual setting of Mail Protection.