Avast Error 0x80046401 Replacing with AVG if no help

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

This is similar to problems posted on the forum by others July & April 2013…saw no solution, so I will probably have to reluctantly replace Avast with AVG.
When Avast wasn’t updating program I did a reinstall, Registered yesterday 1/20/14; Today when I started, Avast said I had 0 days left although it shows it’s registered up to 1/20/2015 11:42AM
I get Error 0x80046401 when I try to reregister. This is not a windows error…it’s in an Avast error window.
I’ve attached a screenshot of the avast interface showing it registered until 1/20/2015

2

have you tried avast repair option, from ad/remove programs?

and the error code given above is not a avast error code

3

Repair avast!:

  1. Control Panel → Add/Remove programs → avast!
  2. Click on ‘Repair’.
  3. Follow instructions.
  4. Reboot.
4

I’m trying to uninstall avast then either reinstall avast or install avg…the uninstall is difficult. the avast software uninstall utility only goes to Avast 7…but it says it successfully uninstalled it.

5

Uninstalled Avast successfully…then reinstalled and re-registered…Looks OK so far…shows my registration won’t expire till 1/21/2015. The last time I had installed avast without 1st uninstalling it…So this is not just repeat…it’s rinse and repeat. Last time the problem didn’t show up till restart the next day…So I’ll see tomorrow if I’m caught in a Groundhog day loop.

6

Apparently, problem of avast ‘forgetting’ I’m registered is solved…I uninstalled avast using older aswclear.exe uninstaller…then reinstalled the latest avast version. Today avast started fine, showing the proper registration expiration. I don’t know what caused the problem, but perhaps, when I reinstalled avast because it didn’t want to update the program, I did so over the prior installation and this might have caused a conflict with the mix of old and new. I used the aswclear.exe instead of the newer avastclear.exe because it was linked to in an older post. I have no reason to believe the newer wouldn’t work better…but what I did worked and prior posts in July and April showed a great deal of frustration and no solution so I wanted to relay exactly what worked. YMMV.