Alert from Security Center

This is my 1st time on this forum. ::slight_smile: I don’t know if I put this question in the correct area of the forum? I’m not a computer genius by any means & sometimes allot of computer talk and abbreviations sound Chinese to me! ;D However, I am doing allot of reading & trying to learn, so any help I may get, please make it in plain easy to understand English. :wink: So… this is my problem. Every time I turn on my computer I keep getting an alert in lower right corner from the Security Center on my PC. When I go into security center, I see a message that says, “Avast Antivirus 4.8 reports that it might be out of date”. I know that 4.8 is the latest version & it is NOT out of date. It works just fine. I just had my computer restored by a technician who put the Avast antivirus on for me. Why am I getting this alert & how do I get it to stop? ??? How to make security center show that my virus protection is on & up to date? ??? Any help or ideas would be appreciated! :slight_smile: BTW, I don’t know if this is relevant but I have a Compaq Presario R3000 laptop with Windows XP. 8)

check your date and time :wink:

Couple of things to check:
Date and time correct, as above, which might fix it.
Is your Avast really up to date?
-Right click on the blue ball in the system tray (bottom right) and select “about Avast”.
-In the window that opens, expand the entry for “VPS file” by clicking on the plus sign.
-Check the compilation date is todays date. As I type, mine reads 20/10/2009, and the file version reads 091020-0. Yours should be similar, or more recent, allowing for the time difference.

If it’s not up to date, try manually updating.
-Right click the Avast system tray icon, mouse over “Updating” then select “iAVS Update”

Report what happens.

Bit of background as to what “up to date” means in this context.
Thousands of new malwares (viruses, trojans, worms, rootkits etc) are created by malware writers every week, maybe every day.
The new variants, once recognised by/reported to the AV companies, are added to the database in what is generally called a “definitions” file. New difinitions, when released, are downloaded by the security program. Typically this will happen once or twice a day, when the program is configured to auto-update (which Avast does, by default.)

So although the program version, at 4.8.1356, might indeed be up to date, it starts to become progressively more useless as time goes by unless the definitions are updated (VPS file.) Which is what the security centre is warning you about.

The tech who put Avast on your machine hopefully also told you you would need to register it within a certain time, to keep getting definitions. Registration is free, and used so the company can keep track of how many installations there are around the world. (And maybe other corporate-y type reasons. I don’t know. But it’s a painless procedure.)

Another possibility is that the Windows Security Centre has gotten itself all flustered, the poor dear, and will need resetting. If that’s the case, we’ll know by your response/s and talk you through that.

Tarq57: I checked the date & time. This was OK, but the time zone was wrong, so I fixed that. Then I went to check Security Center & still no change. I’m still being told Avast is out of date. The tech who installed Avast on my computer failed to tell me that I needed to register it. I had no idea about this. It has probably been about a month since he re-stored my computer, so I don’t know if I passed up the alloted time frame to register? When I checked the compilation date, it was not current. Today’s date is 10-21-09 (or 21-10-09 as you would say in New Zealand) and the date that I found was 9/24/09 and 090924-0. When I went into “updating” then “iAVS update” this is what happened…I got a message that said “The license key for this product is invalid. Please contact you reseller or support@avast.com” then a Summary box came up looking like it wanted to download an update but I don’t think it did anything. I just closed it. So, apparently there is something more to this Security Center warning then just fixing the date and time. I wish it would have been that easy! What should I do next? ??? Thanks for all your help & information about viruses. You have been a great help. I just got a virus on my computer a few days ago called Security Tool. It was trying to install itself on my computer but I did not click on it to let it in. I was able to get it off by installing Malwarebytes Anti-Malware onto my computer. I was wondering how this was able to slip by the Avast Anti-virus program? I guess I now know the answer, Avast is not up to date and not working.

Go here, fill out the form.
Within a very short time a registration key will be emailed to you. Copy the key, right click the Avast system tray icon, select “About Avast” then click “License key”, paste the key in the space provided, click OK.
Get updates.
Hope that works, no reason why it shouldn’t.

Let us know.
(Sometimes the security centre gets it right. That’s why I like to keep it turned on. ;))

Tarq57: That did the trick. ;D It is all fixed now. :slight_smile: I just went into Security Center to double check & it now says Virus Protection is on! Thanks for all your help. :-* (if the tech who installed Avast on my computer had only told me about the registration, it would have saved me allot of confusion ???)

yeah you’ve probably used it beyond the two months limit after which a registration is required. Glad to see you could sort your issue :slight_smile: …and yeah, the tech could and should have told you.

Glad to have helped.
The tech should have mentioned it, for sure, but he actually showed real good sense in putting Avast on there in the first place. You might want to mention it to him.
And look on the other good side: you found this forum. ;D
Any time, any questions.

Yes, you are right, it is a good thing I found this forum! :o I have a feeling it is going to come in handy! In fact, I just came across another issue & posted a new question. This one is a bit trickier than the last. ??? Maybe you all could check that post out & see if we cant figure a solution for that problem? You guys are great, I love this site! :wink:

Here is what I did to fix this problem when it happened to me. Uninstall Avast and also use Avast Uninstall Tool in safe mode. Download Ccleaner and install it to desktop. Restart PC and go into safe mode by continually tapping F-8 key, choosing Safe Mode from the list of choices (black screen), Run Ccleaner and Avast Uninstall Tool, and then restart PC out of safe mode. Install Avast again. This is what worked for me at the time. You can use Ccleaner without going into safe mode if you want to and see if it fixes this.
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/chsafe.htm
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast-uninstall-utility.html
http://download.cnet.com/ccleaner/

EntitY, this particular problem is (1) fixed, and (2) not really related to the fix you’ve suggested.

Well, thank you Tarq57, for taking the time to set me straight on this! It did fix my problem though…

No prob, yours was probably some kind of corrupted/damaged install, rather than a non-entered key.