Avast 18.8 rr-eactivate

[Diehard Win98]

In both WinXP and Vista builds, have gotten  an alert to re-activqte Avast18.8 free license recently

But when you select Avast Free instead of Premium, you get a new screen with one-time offer

There is no way to exit this screen.   There is no X or 'no thanks'.  The only thing yo can do is reboot.

Next boot, you have the same alert.

Is my only option to uninstall and re-install Avast 18.8?

[DavidR]

Try the (Alt key + F4 key) together whilst this 'active window' is open (not avast program window), that should close a window.

Note if you have the main Avast window open, make sure it is only the renewal window that is active.

[Diehard Win98]

After pressing Alt+F4 to close the one-time Premium offer screen, the original alert screen re-appears.

That is, the selection for Avast Free didn't happen.

[DavidR]

Well it has been an extremely long time since I used 18.8 on my old XP system and it didn't give a graceful exit, but as far as I can recall it did have the X top right (and the key stroke option I suggested did work. Just in case, there are two Alt keys on most keyboards, it is the one on the Left side of the keyboard.

However, it would appear something has changed, which it shouldn't have in what is effectively a closed version.

Again previously you could ignore the nags and after 13 days (I can't recall the exact time frame), but eventually it would renew itself. 

[Diehard Win98]

Today when I got the license expired screen in Avast and clicked re-activate, I got a different screen.
It offers Premium, but has 'no thanks'.  Clicking 'no thanks'  puts you back to the original screen.  No activation.

I noticed Avastsvc.exe was no longer running.  So protection was dead

I re-installed.  But for the 1st few boots got the license expired screen, then the you are protected screen.

Avast is anxious to get rid of free users it seems.

[DavidR]

I would suggest it is more the issue of still having an unsupported OS resulting in having an old and no longer supported Avast Version.

I have only been using Avast Free for 20 years.  It fits my needs and I also have some other areas covered.  I also make regular system and data backups.

Being a business, they too have to make money.

[NON]

Registration of Avast 18 has not been working since 2022.
Reinstall of Avast removes current licenses, and as you can't get a new one as registration not working, Avast 18 enters some kind of fallback-mode that works without license, that is the screen you are seeing (expired => protected change).

[rocksteady]

I agree with NON. This V18 Free licence activation issue has been true for a long time. See: https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=220639.msg1705524#msg1705524