I recently updated to Windows 8.1, which was a mistake. All sorts of problems so far, but I digress. System is 64-bit Windows 8(.1) and was running Avast with no problems prior to the update.
I had a version of Avast that was probably a couple of months old, and when I updated Windows, it totally uninstalled it. OK, not the end of the world. I re-downloaded the newest version of Internet Security - which I’d already purchased - from the Avast website. Everything reinstalled fine, but the firewall simply won’t start. The interface is also completely different than what I was used to and I’m wondering whether or not I had the correct version. The tray icon just has a yellow warning triangle over it, and the status tab in Avast shows a large warning saying the firewall is off. I tried disabling Windows firewall before attempting to reactivate it, which did not help. Every time I try to activate the firewall it simply says the firewall could not be started.
Has anyone else run into this and is it something I can fix? I can’t even seem to find an option to make the warning go away, and I’m hoping the rest of the protection is running properly. It’s hard for me to tell because the firewall off message is prominently displayed over everything and cannot be removed.