I have two client machines running Avast 7 Free Edition and the exact behavior as described in the original post is occurring right now, as of May 2 2012. They also will not accept Offline Registration. I have never encountered this failure in more than ten years of using Avast in Pro and free versions, and I am thinking I will switch the clients to AVG if this cannot be resolved.

These are supposed to be free one year licenses. How hard would it be to post valid free license keys or have an instant pop-up generator that users could paste into their current editions?

In fact, how hard would it be to have the program automatically register when installed, and then remind the user to enter “Re-register Free Version” or “Upgrade to Pro Version” ???

Admittedly, having the Email of the user is understandable but that would still be required during the initial install.

Please resolve this issue. Thank You!