Can't get avast to accept my license key

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

This install has been painful:

  1. Avast 5.0 installed over 4.8. I didn’t know you needed to uninstall 4.8 until I started reading postings here after all the trouble I’ve had.
  2. Avast wasn’t running it’s services. Had to register, but the “register now” button only brought up “choose services” page. After clicking on Free Home, nothing…
  3. Registered at avast.com and got the license key in email.
  4. Copied the license key, and tried to insert it. Avast error message “The system can’t find the file specified.”
  5. Came out here, read that I needed to uninstall avast using the clear tool. Downloaded that, ran it in safe mode, had to reboot computer a few times to get it stable.
  6. Re-downloaded latest version from cnet–5.0.418 I think…
  7. Installed, and still getting error message from step 4. Also replay of behavior in step 2.

Any ideas? All I can think of is going back to 4.8…

2

Oh, and I have XP SP3, running IE 8 on wireless connection…

3

V5 registers without requiring an e-mail. There are step by step instructions here http://support.avast.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=459#idt_01

4

Well, that only works when the behavior of the program is what is expected. I never got to the registration form as shown in Step 3 of that link.

5

I also installed 5.0 on top of 4.8 and had the same problem. I finally uninstalled it, cleared out remnants with aswclear5, and started again from scratch. This time, the “Register” button appeared and I was able to fill in the form and register online.