"You Are Unprotected" On Icon but "Protected" according to main program?

I wonder if anyone could please help me out with this problem which started a couple of weeks ago?

After turning on the PC Avast loads up as normal. Then a couple of minutes later the “Unprotected” logo appears over the taskbar icon. I open the user interface, which tells me “You Are Protected”, and the program and virus definitions are both fully up to date. Yet the “Unprotected” logo remains over the taskbar icon. And using the repair option makes no difference, whilst reinstalling removes the problem for a brief period before it reappears.

So am I “protected” or “unprotected”?

Can someone please explain what is going on here? I’ve used Avast for over a decade without problem. Now I’m constantly getting this issue, to the point that I’m now considering replacing Avast if I can’t sort it out.

Thanks in advance for any help.

I don’t believe it was a conflict as such, but the case of even though I had removed the firewall component and was using the windows firewall.

I can only guess that it didn’t detect the windows firewall being the firewall choice (even though it is in the Windows settings). After I removed the firewall activated the windows firewall and rebooted, the error came back. Repair and reboot this time and that didn’t last long until it came back again. My only option was to reinstall the Avast Firewall component and reboot.

Given yours is ZoneAlarm and I don’t know if this comes as a stand alone firewall and no other components or not ?

ZoneAlarm Firewall — ZoneAlarm Extreme Security NextGen - Complete Cyber Security to Protect your Digital Life. Next-gen antivirus with award-winning Anti-Ransomware, and advanced phishing protection. Anti-phishing Software. Zero-Day Protection. Secure Private Browsing. Real Time Antivirus.

As these other real time components could conflict with Avast.

I just wonder if this issue is related to what I said earlier - "I can only guess that it didn’t detect the windows firewall being the firewall choice (even though it is in the Windows settings) - and or not reading the windows security settings.

Thanks for the reply, I’m using 24.8 Avast.

I notice in your thread you seemed to have experienced a firewall conflict. I’ve never used Avast firewall, always a third-party firewall (Zonealarm).

And I’ve made no recent changes to the PC.

The “unprotected” problem has appeared completely out of nowhere. A restart seems to fix it but that can be an inconvenience, plus it’s not a permament fix.

I had this and there is a topic that I created about it - https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=328261.0

We will need more details to attempt to help, e.g. what antivirus program and version number are you using, have you made and changes recently etc. ?
Much as I did in my topic link above.