corner of screen avast is red with an x stating WARNING your system is unsecured

For the record avast was working perfectly well untill the day after the licence had to be renewed then it started saying WARNING your system is unsecured’ Although when I look to see if the shields are working they still state if i want to ‘disable them’ so clearly are still on/working (presumabily. I can still update the ‘engine and virus definations’ and says its up to date I would add but the feature to update the ‘program’ seems to have been disabled’.

And so I load up the main avast screen where it states ‘you are unprotected your program registration has expired’ please register. The problem is when I click please register it comes up with ‘The online content is unavailable Please check your internet connection and try again’ the problem is the internet is working just fine though. I have tried offline registration option but it states good news you no have to register.

I have some viruses long ago put in the chest so I am thinking if I was to reinstall avast would it not release the viruses as it installs again?

I guess is there anything I should do or is there simply nothing to do?.

I have some viruses long ago put in the chest so I am thinking if I was to reinstall avast would it not release the viruses as it installs again?
No, if you uninstall then content in chest is deleted you can empty it when you want >> https://support.avast.com/en-us/article/Use-Antivirus-Virus-Chest

For your issue you may try repair and reboot >> https://support.avast.com/en-us/article/Repair-Antivirus

https://support.avast.com/article/Activate-Free-Antivirus/

Hi,
Will “saving settings” before to uninstall (and restore after) prevent losing virus chest settings ?

It will save and restore your settings not the files.