I fixed it by going to msconfig and checking the thingie that starts Avast on startup. I rebooted and bingo! There is was.

Thanks.

I have one more question. How do I set up Avast to automatically scan my incoming and outgoing emails. It used to do that and it doesn’t anymore. I use to see a message each time I mailed saying it had scanned and an alarm would go off when I received a dubious email. It no longer does that.