I am having major issues with Avast Free and need to contact them via phone. I’ve looked all around and can find no phone number. I must not be looking in the right spot.
Can anyone give me a number for technical support?
Thanks Much
Why don’t you tell us your issues and we will probably be able to assist you.
FYI, you probably don’t want to call the tech support number. They are well known to do a hard sell and not fix anything.
Your best bet is right here on the forums. Best part is our help is free.
Hi Para-
Thank you for that [i][b]important[/b][/i] and much appreciated info. The last thing I need is someone trying to sell me something.
I don’t you know if you have been following the other thread I started last week, re: “Avast has messed up my computer”–but a forum member here, Essexboy, Schmidthouse, Gopher John and IXWolfe all gave me advice, and essexboy really helped me get things back to normal with Avast.
However, I am STILL having problems with my computer being too slow, and it is now running even slower than it was before, which makes me wonder if I couldn’t have done something wrong, or, perhaps I just need to take the last step that essex provided me with, which was to get some more RAM, because things are really messed up in that department.
I Googles “How to I boost my RAM for free?”. I am on a fixed income (Yes, I’m a dinosaur ;)) and have to search for as much “free” stuff when it comes to my 10 year old PC as I can get. : (
Well…I was provided with a couple links to You Tube videos on how to add RAM by taking it from the actuall Hard Drive. I was trying to follow along with this one, but had a hard time since the person isn’t using XP, and when he got to the point where he uses the calculator–I was totally lost. Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk14nPuz4ns
Anyway…I thought that maybe if I tried essexboys suggestion and add sme more RAM, that this might help.
Also, I am using a program called “Super Anti Spyware Free Edition”, and for some reason when I run a scan(which I am forced to do several times throughout the day) a bunch of Ad.ware, and once in awhile some serious malware comes up during the scan that needs to be removed. I’m assuming that, when I run a scan with Avast, and none of the Ad.ware comes up during the Avast scan, that the ad.ware isn’t that much of a threat, so Avast doesn’t mess with it, but then, I don’t know, not being computer savvy.
Then, at the end of the Smart Scan, I am told that I have issues with my network, and that I have 21 pieces of “Junk” that need to be removed, but that in order for me to remove it I need to upgrade to one of the other Avast products. So, I am guessing that this could also be causing the computer to slow down.
Does any of this make any sense? I feel like a real dumb bell not knowing any of this stuff!
Thanks so much, Para-Noid
Rest assured you are not a dumb bell.
Could you please provide more info…
How much RAM do you have now?
Any other security software you have now or ever had? (Firewall, anti-malware,etc.?)
If removed how was it uninstalled?
For the most part Super Anti-Spyware takes care of tracking cookies. Tracking cookies are by nature harmless.
What avast is finding is “grime” buying “avast cleanup” will help. Personally I don’t use it. If you want to do some
minor “housekeeping” you may want to try CCleaner. If you decide to use CCleaner
“turn off” system monitoring and use extreme caution when using the registry cleaner. Also don’t add a RAM card yourself unless
you know exactly what you are doing. When you purchase a RAM card most places/techs will install it for you at no additional cost.
Mostly right now we need the information requested above.
This using Hard Disk space as Virtual RAM is never going to be as fast as normal RAM, this pagefile.sys has been used by default for some considerable time even in XP.
Essentially this just swaps out data in the Real RAM if it hasn’t been accessed for a while and places it in the pagefile.sys, freeing up some real RAM space.
If any information previously in RAM that is needed again it has to be swapped back in to RAM and this also means something is likely to have to be swapped out. This swapping in and out adds an additional load on the system and depending on your hard drive, it could be very slow and this is often the bottleneck on your system.
I have modified my Virtual Memory and in all honesty it never made a blind bit of difference or you would probably need a stopwatch to see any difference (see attached image). Basically I used a custom setting of it, more to stop it growing to big and becoming fragmented. Me, I found real RAM is the only way to increase performance, so I have 4GB on this win XP Pro system the maximum it can handle.
RAM is relatively cheap and even adding 1GB more can make a big difference. Your biggest problem is, A) identifying the type of RAM you have and B) sourcing the same specification of RAM.
I think that SuperAnti-Spyware is scaring you unnecessarily, as much of what it finds is cr4p, it really makes a big deal out of tracking cookies and they are not a security issue but a mildly privacy one. This however is speculative as we would have to see the SAS logs to see what it is reporting.
Run the system scanner on this page http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/homepage
That will tell you how much and what type of RAM your system will take
This forum is full of long time users of Avast and many of who have a high degree of technical knowledge about computers, some more then others.
These users over the years have solved many seemingly insurmountable issues reported.
You don’t need a phone number, you have this forum. 
My thanks to all of you! Para-Noid, DavidR, Essexboy and Schmidthouse, for all of your generosity, help, kindness and support! I can’t believe all that I have learned over the past week or so.
I am grateful to all of you, and very thankful that there is this forum with very knowledgeable people whom unselfishly lend a hand to people like me, who don’t know what we’re doing!
DavidR and Essexboy, I clicked on the link sent by essexboy to se what I have on my system, and made a screen shot. I have no idea what any of this means, though. :-[ so am posting it for you to see.
You guys are great! THANKS EVER SO MUCH!
OK that is telling you that you have four slots on the motherboard and each currently has 256 MB of RAM
If you click sort at the top right you can sort by price low to high
Ideally there should be a 2Gb option that is relatively cheap
Thank you very much, essexboy!
From the screenshot you provided Steve197, It looks like you can Max your RAM out at 4 GB which would be a significant improvement.
Wow! That’s quite a lot! Thanks for letting me know!!! Is there anything at all, though, that I can remove from my computer that I may not need, that will free up some of the memory that I don’t have after all these years?
Uninstall any not needed programs and disable from startup any programs that aren’t required to start every time you boot the system.
Thanks so much, but…I wouldn’t know what to remove and what to keep, nor do I know how to remove them. : (
In CCleaner click Tools>Start-up then untick anything you don’t need running during start-up.
By cutting down on what is running at start-up you will be saving RAM.
You can uninstall any software you don’t use at all. In other words if you don’t use it, get rid of it.
We can’t tell you what you need or don’t need because we don’t know what is on your computer.
If you want to know about a certain software just ask.
“There is no such thing as a stupid question except for the question not asked.”
Note: I mentioned CCleaner in stead of task manager because it may be easier for the OP.
@ Steve197
Seeing you only have 1GB of RAM which is extremely low for programs these days (especially Anti Virus), my personal opinion would be to focus on purchasing ‘more RAM’ if at all possible.
Just my opinion.
Thanks, Schmidthouse. I will have to get this thing into the shop and try that as soon as I get back on my feet.
One thing that still baffles me is…after I run a “Smart Scan” I am STILL getting the red exclamation point telling me that I have a network problem as well as that my computer needs optimization, so I am still wondering if this has something to do with my computer running slower. It seems like it’s running slower now, even after I reinstalled Avast, ran a defrag with a different program, which essexboy sent me a link to (that I know works better than the Windows/Microsoft defrag program), and such.
According to Time Warner, my problem lies with the fact that I have a different anti virus program installed, rather than have what they want me to use, which is the McAfee stuff they sent me the link to download for free. I don’t want McAfee though, I want to keep what I have, and as soon as I get back on my feet I plan to go with their top of the line Avast package so I can reap the full benefits of their software. Thanks so much for your help.
Go to control panel > add/remove
Click Avast and select Change
Deselect the following from the middle column as you will not need them :
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/73555776/avasttools.JPG
SecureLine
Cleanup
Select continue and allow it to do its thing, reboot once done
Thanks for this, essexboy. I just want to make certain, before follow the directions and perform this task.
Are you telling me to uncheck all of those things in the middle list? Click continue, it will then perform something, then when it’s finished, reboot?
No just remove the tick from
SecureLine
Cleanup
then continue