I had a problem for a long time that the providers didn´t start in Avast 4.7. After installing 4.7 it was a red circle over the Avast Icon. For several months I used Avast 4.6 instead. But recently, after a reinstallation of Windows 2000, I got another problem. Avast started to upgrade by itself despite my settings. And after upgrading to 4.7 it didn´t function.
Now I have found the solution. I doesn´t install Avast in the folder “Program Files”. Instead I install it on a diffrent partition and in a folder called “Säkerheter”. The second letter in this name is a swedish character and because of this Avast didn´t start properly.
After a new installation of Avast, but in the folder “Sakerheter” instead it seems to work without any problems.
The odd thing is that this wasn´t any problem in the earlier version 4.6 of Avast.
There was a “database change” somewhere in avast! 4.7, which introduced this problem (occurring with non-English characters in avast! path). In the latest update, however, the problem should be already fix (at least I believe so).
No I have had the latest version and it didn´t function. In this particular case it was the swedish character ä (an a with two dots over, in the case you doesn´t see what I write) who caused the problem. Could it be that some foreign character works and some don´t?