I have had Avast installed and running for quite a while now (at least six months). Late last week it started telling me that it couldn’t update and that my license key was invalid.
So, thinking that it may have expired… I went online and registered a new key. I received it in my mailbox, copied and pasted it into the registration window and was told that the operation had completed successfully.
Yet, when I go to update the program it still says that I do not have a valid key for this product. I verified that I am indeed running Avast 4.7 Home Edition. The about window shows my key and shows that it is set to expire on May 1, 2008.
I have even tried registering for more keys but none of them seem to work. I checked my system date, rebooted my computer and still nothing. I am thinking about re-installing the software.
I am absolutely sure that I am an administrator on my machine… and that the date and time is correct on my system. I will reboot it again when I get home tonight and double check the BIOS clock… but Windows XP and the bios clock should always be the same, right? I remember back in Win95 that the two could be different but I don’t think that that is the case anymore.
I think Win9x read the info from Bios at start, and then used its own “clockticks” (i.e. it didn’t synchronize these 2 values subsequently, unless you chose to set a new clock value from Windows). Don’t know how it works these days… anyway, I don’t think the problem is here.
Could you please post a screenshot of your About box, with the Registration key item expanded?
Well, I got tired of trying to figure this out so I just re-installed. To my surprise, it works again!
There was probably some DLL somewhere that was over-written or down-graded by some other program… or perhaps a reg key that was mis-configured. Regardless, it now works again.
Thanks to everyone who tried to help. I really appreciate it.