Ladies and Gentlemen,
My subscription for Avast! Antivirus Free expired back in the Fall of 2019 and it has never reactivated.
Every day (at least) I get a pop-up telling me that my subscription has expired. I click the button that is supposedly meant to initiate the process of reactivation which brings up another window offering me a choice between the premium and free antivirus versions. I select the free version and then I get another window offering me a free trial of premium which I decline. Then I’m good usually for the day. Next day, same thing.
From what I’ve read about the current activation process, when I choose the free version in that second window, that should be the end of it. I don’t even have to supply an email address like I used to. I should be able to go to the My Subscriptions tab in the user interface and see a subscription to Avast! Free AV and how many days remain in the yearly subscription.
I see none of that.
If auto-renewal fails, you are supposed to be able to click on a green “Upgrade Now” button in the Subscriptions tab to manually initiate a renewal.
There is no Upgrade Now button.
Under “Subscriptions On This PC” it reads, “You don’t have any subscriptions. How about getting one?” Following this is a green “Buy Now” button.
Up at the top of this window it says, “Add your Avast subscriptions in one of two ways” and you choose either, “Log into your Avast account” or “Enter a valid activation code.” None of these options are supposed to be required for getting a yearly activation of the Free AV product.
A few days ago I got so sick of the process that I downloaded the latest version of Avast! Free AV (the offline full installer) and installed it over my existing version. I have read that installation of the latest version is necessary for activation success but it made no difference. Exact same behavior.
Then I used the Avastclear utility in safe mode to remove everything and then reinstalled from the same new version download. Except for taking way longer to update, this had no effect. Exact same behavior. No activation.
What am I supposed to do? The product will not activate by itself and it offers me no provision to do it manually. I’ve been using Avast! Free AV for around ten years with no activation problems. If it ain’t broke, why fix it?
If it matters, I am using Windows 7 Pro and Firefox but I also have a Windows 8.1 machine that has the same activation issues.
Thank you for your time and attention.
Grant