VCLEVER BLOG

Posted on August 28, 2013 at 2:35 pm by Andrew Arnott

Here’s some help (hopefully) for anyone who uses Avast and finds that it suddenly and mysteriously stops working from one day to the next.

The Problem
Avast stops working after a reboot for no apparent reason (no changes made and working fine before). The Avast system tray icon shows a little cross and gives a status that the system is unsecured. Clicking the ‘Fix Now’ button does nothing. Also, it says ‘Not yet registered, 0 days remaining’ even though it is registered and the future renewal date is shown correctly. Incidentally, I’m running Windows 7 Professional (64 bit) Service Pack 1.

The Solution
There seems to be very little information about what to do when this happens and most forums suggest you try to repair the installation (from ‘uninstall or change a program’ in Control Panel) or uninstall and reinstall Avast. Repairing didn’t work for me – it came up with an error message. And before I tried reinstalling, here’s what I found worked (and it only takes literally a couple of minutes)…

1. Go to Download Updates on the Avast website
2. Download the latest VPS update
3. Follow the instructions to install the update
4. When done, restart your computer

After a restart, Avast was active and completely back to normal for me. Hope it works for you too.