I have just received and email from Avast in which they state that I may have contravened the End User Agreement by using more than five active installations of Avast 2014 Free.
This is absolute nonsense as I have only two desktop computers in my home. One is a Windows XP Pro desktop system and the other is a Windows 7 Home premium desktop system - both have Avast 2014 Free running and those are the only active installations of Avast I have. I have had cause to uninstall Avast completely and undertake a fresh installation on occasions to overcome technical problems - perhaps this is the reason that Avast believe I am running more than five active installations.
I have explained the situation in a reply to the email and hope that the situation is resolved quickly.
I don’t really know the answer to your question - I set up Avast on the two computers independently with the XP desktop having Avast installed some months ago when I swapped from AVG. I only acquired the Windows 7 desktop relatively recently (around the turn of the year) and installed Avast in preference to Windows Security Essentials soon afterwards.
I’ve had a few problems on the Windows 7 system which meant I tried a few repair installations. The issues were not resolved so I tried uninstallation followed by running AvastClea and reinstallation. That did not clear up the problems so I tried uninstallation followed by running AvastClear, then running Rezjor’s cleanup tool and then installation. This finally resolved all the issues. Each new installation was registered with my email address which was also used for the XP installations.
I use Avast free. I have had this email too. As it happens I have five PCs with Avast free installed in my home. I checked AvastGUI ‘Devices’ and found much repetition of device names and a couple of long forgotten devices which were set up for some special purpose or other and then were not deleted from the device list. They have not been used for ages. None of the device names on that list were created for the use of others, i.e. all device names on that list were were created for my sole use.
Avast seems to have paid little regard to the lapse of use of devices. I hardly ever have all five devices in steam at the same time and never more than five.
To cut a long story short, I have now pruned the devices list down to my five actual devices and will henceforth keep a careful eye on it. I do not yet know if the device repetitions are due to reinstallations of Avast. That will be found out in due course.
It’s quite reasonable that Avast should be watchful of this. However, their monitoring of devices seems to leave a little to be desired. In any case, what’s to stop an unethical user from registering devices under different email addresses. I use the same email address for all my devices so can hardly be considered to be attempting to behave dishonestly by concealing my use of Avast free. I have used the same static IP address for the past twelve years. Visitors (my wife’s sisters mostly) occasionally bring their Avast free (registered through their own email addresses) equipped PCs for me to check out a problem, do a backup or an update. They will be connected to the Internet through that static IP address.
Is it possible that those with homes using IPv4 with NAT are more likely to be considered business users than those using IPv6?
I am getting increasingly confused. I now understand the basic concept of reusing the original license key but do not know how to correct the problem caused through my initial ignorance.
In following the link you gave me, Eddy, I entered my details and received an automated email telling me that Avast have no record of my email address (see below:)
We are sorry, but we have no record in our database of the email address provided. If you need a license key for avast! Free Antivirus, please use this online form to request one: http://www.avast.com/registration-free-antivirus.php
Does this mean my previous registrations are now cancelled and I need to re-register? If so, do I need a separate registration for bot my desktops (one XP and the other Windows 7 - they are not networked so run independently)?