I just received a popup from my Avast Home 4.8 saying that it would expire soon and to either upgrade or purchase. I thought it meant my registration, but that’s good till January.
Does it mean that Avast 4.8 will stop receiving virus signature updates soon and that I must upgrade to 5.0 to stay current?
Hi.
Avast 4.8 will be supported ti’ll the end of the year and sooner or later you will need to upgrande to Avast 5, it’s all up to you, but i’ll sugest to upgrade now, version 5 is better 
Do I need to use that 4.x removal tool that I read about before, or is it OK to just upgrade directly?
Avast5 has been out for 8 months now and avast 4.8 support is likely to cease at the end of this year, the clock is ticking and that is why they are trying to give a sense of urgency to move to avast5. You can still get the avast5 free antivirus you aren’t forced to purchase.
Download the free version of avast 5 and install it over 4.8 that will retain the registration information, uninstall avast5 all in one action. So you don’t have to register avast5 that way until the remainder of your registration period; you get a notification 14 days before and you can update using the avastUI, no need for the old method of registering getting an email and entering it.
http://files.avast.com/iavs5x/setup_av_free_eng.exe (English only)
For most it will be ok to upgrade directly, but there still is a minor risk.
My advice is to use the tool, and you’ll get it from the first try 100% .
Cheers.
I think I’ll use the tool to be on the safe side. I’ve had too many nightmare experiences with stuff going wrong not to be careful.
I followed the procedure and got 5 installed. I submitted my email for program registration, but the email with my reg number hasn’t arrived yet. In the past, it always arrived immediately.
You don’t have to do the copy and paste a key number from e-mail with Avast 5. Just entering your e-mail address and name registers the free version.
Boy, do I feel like an idiot! When I tried to register through Avast the first time, I entered my last name in the email address field, thinking it was the last name field. That’s why it gave me an error message! This time, I actually read the field names and it let me register. :-[ :-[ :-[
The main thing is that you now have it sorted ;D
Now you can edit your Profile, Signature, to reflect the new avast free 5.0.677 version.
Done and done.
One last question: Whenever Thunderbird checks my Gmail, Avast pops up a thing saying that it can’t scan the incoming email because it’s SSL and that I need to disable the SSL in Thunderbird and that Avast will provide the SSL itself. Am I actually supposed to disable SSL in Thunderbird? Won’t that prevent Gmail from working?
You need to uncheck the use SSL in thunderbird to allow avast to scan the email, it will handle the secure connection to send the email, etc. It won’t prevent it from working.
See - avast 5.x and SSL see http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=47818.msg405301#msg405301 and http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=47768.msg406023#msg406023.
The mail scanner uses SSL with server if it has detected that some mail client successfully used it. If it was not detected, avast tries the SSL support itself and uses SSL or STARTTLS if possible. We did it this way because if user disabled SSL because of avast and then reinstalled avast, the mail scanner would not know that it should use SSL.
Do I also need to disable SSL in my SMTP settings?
Yes for both POP3 and SMTP.
I don’t know where it is in Thunderbird as I don’t use it, but each email account setting will have somewhere to say the server requires a secure connection (SSL), see image. This is of my OE email account settings in the Advanced section, it should give you an idea of what you are looking for but not the area.
Wow! It actually works!
Thanks for the help.
You’re welcome, I didn’t have any doubt ;D