I noticed a strange problem when I received the registration renewal message on my computer which uses version 4.8 Home edition. The red box would appear on the lower right of the screen telling me to click here to install the new version of the program and renew my registration.
When I would click on that box, it spent a long time downloading version 6 of the program and then nothing else happened. My system seemed to work normally until I tried to place the system into suspend mode. At that point the system was hung and would not do anything until I killed the Avast programs (Ashmaisv and Ashwebsv, I think). After that the system worked normally, although I could not restart Avast until I rebooted. After rebooting and updating the virus data, I would get the same message in the red box telling me to click here. When I would click on the red box, this whole process would be repeated.
After going through this cycle several times I checked Avast.com and realized that version 6 would not run on my system. I tried going through the process of manually updating the Avast registration and almost everything is back to normal now. The only thing that does not work is the "About avast!" option that appears after right clicking the blue circle on the task bar. The task appears in the task bar, but nothing is shown on the screen.
I like my old Windows 98 computer. It still works very well, and I have used it with Avast antivirus for many years with no major problems. Many thanks to Avast Software for continuing to provide a product that does not follow the destructive strategy of built-in obsolescence that dominates the computer industry.