Resident protection - not truning on

How do I get the Resident protection (the real-time protection of the operating system) to turn on. It doesn’t seem to turn on and I think I have tried everything. Please help.
Thanks!

are you talking about the on-access protection control of avast or something of the windows os ???

What Operating System are you using ?
Have (or did) you have another AV installed in this system, if so what was it and how did you get rid of it ?

Is the avast ’ a ’ icon in your system tray and is there a red circle over it ?
Are you getting any errors, if so what are they ?

Thanks for the help. My problem is with the on-access protection control of avast. I am using an old version on windows, windows 98 and the avast icon has a red circle over it. I have received no errors-just that the on-access protection is disabled and I can not get it to enable. I have modified the security levels for the on-access protection-I have tried to enable the protection but it keeps on disabling itself.

What about the question about other AVs ?
That is the most common reason for the red circle.

If you do not have any other antivirus in your computer and did not have in the past, well, try to repair your installation?
Go to Control Panel > Add/Remove programs > avast! antivirus > Remove. Then choose Repair function in the popup window (Repair). You must be connected to the internet while repairing.

If this does not help, can you uninstall / boot / install / boot again?