my fault. i should have kept it simple, and fortunately the fix was.
all i did was open up and terminal and become root:
sudo su
i gave my password, of course. then put in the command given by zilog
sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=128000000
avast GUI popped right up.
thanks guys (and especially zilog, sorry for the clutter :-)
this thread has been solved. ejames82