"i" icon missing

when I start my computer the “a” icon activates and appears but not the “i” icon for my VRDB. How do I activate it?

It should be activated automatically unless you chose to merge the two avast icons ?
What is your OS ?
Is the ‘i’ icon hidden,click the < on the Taskbar to display hidden icons.

I did not merge the two icons. My OS is Windows XP home.

And the icon is not hidden.
This happened yesterday too but when I restarted my computer the “i” icon appeared. Today it did not and, like I said, I can’t find how to activate it.

There is no specific way to activate that icon, the display of the icon/s is the same and it should be none or both displayed (Program Settings, Appearance, Show avast tray icon) . So there is some thing wrong with your installation if only one is displayed.

Try a repair of avast. Add Remove programs, select ‘avast! Anti-Virus,’ click the Change/Remove button and scroll down to Repair, click next and follow. You need to be on-line to do this.
If that doesn’t work try, uninstall, reboot, install, reboot.

I think you would be better served by having the icons merged, the VRDB only runs every three weeks so I feel it is a bit of a waste to have it sat in the system tray. You could edit the avast4.ini file (notepad or any text editor), [VRDB] section and add the line MergeIcons=1 if it doesn’t exist or change the value to =1 if present. This will fource the merge allowing access to the VRDB actions from the ‘a’ icon.
[VRDB]
MergeIcons=1

For the ‘i’ icon (VRDB): http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=14356.msg121337#msg121337
Check your avast4.ini file settings. Click ‘Settings’ in my signature and browse for the VRDB section.
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=1647.msg10271#msg10271
[VRDB]
MergeIcons=0
Disabled=0
ShowTaskbarIcon=1