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I went and entered what you have written into the registry key value for Avast. Then I rebooted but unfortunately it does not help my system to launch Avast. There must be something somewhere else which is not right on my system and which the Avast Ext Ctrl tool and/or Avast’s unuinstall routine is not managing to clear out. Or alternatively the Avast setup routine does not fully re-install the whole Avast program and so I don’t get the icon.
I asked in the Zone Alarm forum about preventing ZA from sensing the repeated comms attempts as an attack and they suggested I enter the Avast programs into ZA and explicitly give the programs full access. I did that but still no joy. (I see the very recent beta of the new “point release” of Avast has something to do with improved working with Zone Alarm.)
It’s a pity that I can’t get Avast to work. I really like Avast as it is really doe seem to me to be the best free antivirus I have come across. However if Avast doesn’t launch itself to automatically protect my system when i boot up then that is not something I can take lightly. I have already spend very many hours on collecting data and trying various remedial actions on this one problem in order to get Avast back to normal. I feel I really can not afford to spend any more time to sort something out with Avast which I would not have expected to have gone wrong in the first place.
So I have to report that I have reluctantly gone to AVG 7. So far AVG 7 is well behaved. Yes, the function in AVG is clealry not as good as that which Avast provides but at least AVG seems (so far!) to protect my system from viruses without any intervention being needed from myself.
I guess that when Avast gets to version 5 (where hopefully Avast’s installation and uninstallation routines get somewhat rewritten) then I may try it again and hopefully use it as my main antivirus tool.
Until then, I saw in another thread that Technical was using Avast as a main antivirus and was also using AVG as an on-demand scanner. Obviously I can’t do it that way.
But can I install Avast to be only an on-demand scanner? If so then what option do I take during installation and how (bearing in mind that I can’t see the Avast icon in the system tray would I invoke Avast to do (1) an on-demand scan and (2) an update of itself.
Thanks to everyone, especially DavidR, and Technical for the help.
Smolls.