I installed Avast on my mother-in-law’s pc years ago. I never set a password on it, just as I don’t have a password for Avast on my own computer. But today I was trying to do some work on her machine and Avast asked for a password before it would let me turn the shields off. She says she didn’t put the password on and her husband never uses the pc. All the maintenance is done by me and this has never happened before. What’s going on?
She’s using Windows 7 Home Premium x64, with free Avast 2015. It won’t let me see the version or much of anything else because I don’t have a password.
Go to “Settings” > “General” > expand “Password” (you may have to scroll down the page) and see if “Protect Avast with a Password” is checked (enabled). There are other settings there for areas to protect with password as well.
It won’t let me into the settings without a password.
I was afraid of that.
If you have lost your avast AV password I’m not aware of any other alternative than to actually do a clean reinstall.
Uninstall avast using this tool: http://www.avast.com/eng/avast-uninstall-utility.html
If you’re using the Home version, reinstall avast from here: http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html
Okay, that worked. Thanks a lot.