How do I turn on my Mail Shield and Internet Shield

This is my first time on a forum so please excuse my ignorance. I am working in Windows XP Professional and use AOL (is that the problem?). I cannot turn on my Mail or Internet Shields or Schedule a Scan. I have the free version of Avast and it is the latest version. I would appreciate any help. I also use IE. I don’t know what else you may need to know. Thanks.

Did you have any antivirus program on the computer before you installed avast?
have you removed it ?
How ?

Try avast repair, and restart…

For a repair of avast. Windows, Add Remove programs, select ‘avast! Anti-Virus,’ click the Change/Remove button from the pop-up window, scroll down to Repair, click next and follow.

did it work ?

Using AOHell might be a problem but it depends what email client and browser you are using ?

AOHell has the habit of using proprietary protocols in their email client and in their browser and if that is the case then the Mail Shield, it is expecting standard POP3, SMTP and IMAP protocols and the Web Shield expects the browser to be using standard HTTP protocol over port 80.

However that said it should make no difference in those shields being started, so the questions Pondus asks may be more relevant.