Thanks for the suggestions. I tried the repair option but I received an error at the end of that indicating that packages were corrupt and I don’t really want to add memory since I only use this computer as a backup but I still want to be protected.

I was able to resolve the problem with the following steps:

  1. Uninstalled Avast
  2. Rebooted in Safe Mode
  3. Ran the Avast uninstaller program I downloaded from the Avast website
  4. Rebooted
  5. Uninstalled ZoneAlarm firewall (version 7 which is the last version to work with W2k)
  6. Rebooted
  7. Ran CCleaner to remove temporary files, etc.
  8. Ran RegSupreme Pro to clean up the registry
  9. Rebooted
  10. Downloaded the latest version of Avast from the Avast website
  11. Reinstalled Avast which said it was successful at the end of the install
  12. There was a red “X” on the Avast icon in the tray so I confirmed that the Avast service was started but I couldn’t run update, scan, etc. through the program
  13. Rebooted
  14. Same as #12 above
  15. Reinstalled Avast again without uninstalling the previous install
  16. Rebooted
  17. Registered the product
  18. Everything now seems to be working fine, the program updated itself successfully, no red “X”, etc.

I’m not sure what happened but after I uninstalled both Avast and ZoneAlarm, cleaned up my system files and registry and reinstalled Avast it still wasn’t working. Reinstalling the second time and / or registering seems to have fixed the situation but I have no idea why. Anyway, the last step is to reinstall ZoneAlarm to see if that breaks anything but regardless, I was finally able to get Avast to install and update successfully.

Thanks,
Jeff