Please help, I need to activate my Internet Security new program. The email I received has an attachment called license.dat and I saved it to Desktop, but when I click on it it just says there’s no program available to open it. I then asked for it to be “resent” and I got an email back saying no such license had been purchased. I also called the help number and it is out of service.
-
Where did you purchase the program? (an actual link or phone number).
-
Can you just rename the file to *.avastlic and see if it works?
If you sent an email to support and they said that a license hadn’t been purchased, it leads me to believe that you may have purchased from a scam site.
i am having the exact same problem. it has taken forever, multiple installs and scouring the web site.
Inserting the license key into: avast! Free Antivirus, avast! Pro Antivirus and avast! Internet Security.
Instructions about inserting the license key won’t help if the license file is incorrect, that is what has to be resolved.
@ daisy519 and og_77
Did you not get an email with a link to download the license file (license.avastlic) ?
Try the suggested renaming the license.dat file as scythe944 suggested.
If you didn’t have a link to download the license.avastlic file and the rename suggestion doesn’t work - contact sales (at) avast (dot) come. Give them details of the Date of purchase, Where purchased and the email address used for the transaction. If you have any invoice information, order number, etc. that may help them track it down.
tried renaming the file. even the download in the profile is a .dat not .avastic
have uninstalled and reinstalled twice
the response this morning from the support team was links to download and links to documentation! already burned 4 hours on that. was hoping for more.
i have turned of the windows 7 firewall and tried to activate the installed version but although it will connect to avast when updating (although tells me not activated) it won’t connect when trying to activate. says please make sure I am connected to the internet. SO part of the app recognizes that I am connect but not the activation.
starting to regret buying the license. ANY HELP would be greatly appreciated.
new email with proper file sent this morning. .avastlic clicked and worked in seconds.
a little pissed off with the wasted time considering I did all they asked with the wrong file they sent initially.
Any manipulation of the file will broke it.
Can you access your email through webmail and check if the file is correct there (and by any chance, corrupted into your email program)?
Anyway, glad you’ve sorted it out 
I’ve found that renaming the file doesn’t break the license at all. Now, opening the file and making a change surely will.
In fact, I just got a new license for 3 years on monday and it came it the new format (license.avastlic) and I had to install it into my AMS server which uses the old format (license.dat). Renaming the file did no harm and the AMS took it gladly.
@ og_77
I find that patience is a virtue and your questions will be answered 
Tried renaming, didn’t work. Will contact sales for a new file…
If you transmit the file with a different extension, won’t it corrupt it? I’m not sure. Just I’ve guessed with the same behavior while uploading a file to forum with a different extension. But, probably, I’m wrong.
Correct email to contact them is support at support.avast.com. They sent a proper license file and it worked. thanks everyone.
You’re welcome. Feel free to come back any time you need help or just to change experiences 8)
Well, just do this simple test. Take an image file, such as a jpg. rename it to .dat. Then, rename it back to .jpg and try to open it.
It should work just fine.
The problem is when you try to rename a file, open it up and change something. Once saved, it’s screwed. If you don’t touch anything but the extension, it shouldn’t do any harm.
I’ve done this with exe’s as well, since Outlook and most internet providers will prevent exe’s and other files from being sent in emails. If I had to get a small exe over to someone quickly, I’d just rename it to ._xe or something like that and send it with instructions to the recipient to change it back to an .exe before trying to run it. Always worked in the past…
If you do that with dump files and rename them to txt to upload the forum, the file get corrupted.
At least, this is what I’ve read more than once by the developers, saying that the user should use the ftp server to upload.
I think the reason that happens is because of the way that the data is transmitted via ftp. I guess depending on what type of file it is, the FTP client will automatically choose the (best) way to transfer the file and I think it guesses which method to use depending on the file extension.
You might need to transfer the file using Binary, but since you rename the file to .txt, it might use ASCII instead, thus corrupting the file.
So in a nutshell, it’s not the actual renaming of the file that corrupts it, it’s the transmission method used during transfer.
I could be way off, but that’s how I see it so far.
I think you’re fully right.
Actually, shouldn’t happen… the license file should work even if the end-of-lines are changed by a text transfer.
Well, either way, I haven’t had trouble renaming a license file extension so far. So, it’s all good!