Hi Tana,
Sorry to hear you have still not managed to get to the bottom of the new avast.
I don't recall you saying which operating system you have been using, or whether it is fully up to date - to service pack three if Windows XP. In my case I had another problem in tandem with the antivirus one, in that I had an old version of the msinstaller programme and this was preventing some updates. If you are not up to date with SP3 then you may have some important missing updates too. So I would do this before you try reinstalling avast.
Also, I may not have made it clear that if you are using XP Home the security tabs of the permissions sheets of the various files and folders do not show up unless you are in safe mode, and you can't change them unless you are an 'administrator'. Some of the services would not let me start them until I was the administrator in safe mode. Similarly, if you are in XP Pro and have 'simple file sharing' enabled, then you also don't get to see the permissions sheet, in properties, and this can be a real pain when progs you download come with administrator permissions only. (This can get pretty complicated, so if you do think this might be a permissions problem do read up about the subject first - don't have a good link off hand, sorry.)
On the other hand you might just have a stubborn service like I did with the mail scanner. If you right click on MyComputer and open the managment console and then services, you will see which are started and which not.
You may simply get to click the start the service link, and be away if you are lucky, but I had to do quite a bit of tinkering with permissions and ownership before this finally worked for me - and I'm afaid I didn't make notes...
Mind you there may be a much simpler alternative:
Before I managed to get mine working I put a question on the microsoft.public.outlookexpress.general newsgroup, and found that the Microsoft Security Essentials is now free too, so you might like to read what the group said. Start from the bottom as they seem to top post there - there are some links to comparisons of the various free alternatives - as the MS version updates through the normal ms updates there should be less time wasted going to two different sites every time you turn on:
"MSE doesn't include an email scanner so there's no confusion about whether to enable or disable it (On OE there is a general opinion that mail scanners are not necessary). MSE auto-updates at least once every 24 hours via the Automatic Updates "tunnel."
As for MSE vs Avira AntiVir Free, see
http://aumha.net/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=43119What is the Best Free Antivirus Software? AVG or Avast! or AntiVir? (by MVP
Donna Buenaventura)
http://www.brighthub.com/computing/smb-security/articles/34746.aspx
spamlet wrote:
> People here used to recommend avast or avg for free av.
>
> Now asking an MS MVP I suppose is not the most reliable way of getting an unbiased answer, but is MS Security Essentials going to be so much better than avast that it is worth me replacing it after I've only just succeeded in getting it going properly?
>
> One thing that strikes me might be an advantage is that if the MS av updates came as part of the normal MS updates, things might be quicker than the two - or more - separate downloads we have to wait for each time we boot up.
>
> Cheers,
> S
>
> "PA Bear [MS MVP]" <PABearMVP@gmail.com> wrote in messagenews:u53Qrg70KHA.5828@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
>>> Can't seem to find a straight answer on the avast forum
>>
>> You get what you (don't) pay for.
>>
>> Tip:
http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/default.aspx>>
>>
>> spamlet wrote:
>>> I know PA, but that little exclamation mark was bugging me!
>>> ;-)
>>>
>>>> Why you don't need your anti-virus to scan your email (in the first
>>>> place)
>>>>
http://thundercloud.net/infoave/tutorials/email-scanning/index.htm>>>>
>>>> spamlet wrote:
>>>>> Can't seem to find a straight answer on the avast forum, so can anyone
>>>>> here explain why the most recent version of avast free, only seems to have
>>>>> a mail scanner that works with Outlook? When I don't have Outlook on, the
>>>>> option to turn on mail scanning remains unresponsive. As it happens I did not
>>>>> use email scanning with my OE in the last version, but in this one there is a
>>>>> permanent exclamation mark over the system tray icon 'warning me' that this thing I can't turn on, isn't turned on. "
