Avast warns "You are unprotected" ever since not renewing Premium

[Secret2]

I had Premium Avast for a couple of years but refused to renew it for the offered price. Today my Premium officially expired, and ever since restarting my PC, there is a red X on my Avast icon and when hovering the cursor over it, Avast shows in red warning "You are unprotected". Nothing in the settings suggests that my Avast's  free protection is off, though.

[DavidR]

Have you uninstalled Avast Premium, if not you would certainly lose premium services. That would appear to be what is happening.

If you uninstall Avast Premium at the point of selecting Uninstall you should be offered to install Avast Free, did you do that ?

[Secret2]

I guess that was it. I didn't know I had to manually re-install. Thank you

[DavidR]

You're welcome.