This has been one of the issues with avast! is trying to get tech support when the product wasn't purchased from a reseller. Real avast! tech support is provided by your avast! reseller, and there are many good ones. I know what happened, and the license file was never inserted, so it ran in trial mode until it expired. I would suggest doing a search online for Avast and making your own decision.

Ever since then I have stayed WAY clear of them and their product that's just my experience with them though. I eventually got his money back and Avast was reported to the Attorney General in my State for unethical sales practices. I told him to contact their support about it (since he bought it directly through Avast) and the 'technician' told him that his program had encountered an error and only he could fix it, to the tune of $145.00 extra on top of what my customer already paid. He tried reinstalling it but had the same results, this was about 2 months after his purchase. A customer of mine had purchased their software for a year license, then the software disabled itself.

My last experience with Avast wasn't really winning.

Avast enable hardened mode