New HP PC - AVAST not recognized as installed

[cwr64]

I have just brought up a new HP P6228p desktop PC running Win7.  It came loaded with Norton Internet Security trial software which I elected to not activate/sign-up for. I installed the current Avast free edition & it appeared to install OK.  I then tried to uninstall Norton using both the Norton uninstall program & also the control panel uninstall.  Neither of these would run because it said there was another installer already running.  So I rebooted - no help.  So I booted to safe mode and the Norton uninstall seemed to run just fine.  All may be OK but I have an issue in that when I click on Control Panel / System & Security there is no entry there that mentions antivirus - is that normal?  There is an entry for Windows Firewall which says the firewall is turned on.  On the taskbar, the little blue Avast icon with the "a" is on & looks normal.  The HP Advisor (PC Dashboard tab)  software application says that the firewall & Windows updates are turned on, but that "We did not find an anti virus software installed on your system".
Do you now why this is & whether there is something I need to fix?

[mkis]

Try a manual update of avast - rightclick 'a' icon in sys tray and select updating.

See if yr OS sees avast after the update process has been run through.

[cwr64]

I did the right-click update and it ran and said that everything was already up to date.
Hmmm...

Tonight something I clicked on said that Windows Defender was also running - I don't know why.  But I changed (somewhere) the Defender options to not be running and I assume that is fixed.

[mkis]

Windows Defender works in conjunction with avast. Should be no problem there.

Yes okay if already up to date. what happens is often need to run the update process through for the program to be recognised. I'm not exactly sure why. I think it is just running the program through a cycle of activity allows the OS to pick up that it is operational.

Important thing - Is everything okay now?