I have a gateway laptop computer running winxp home edition with 512 ram and a 40g hard drive. My Avast will not update automatically. When my computer comes up after being off microsoft tells me my virus protection is out of date, I update it and it still does it a day or 2 later. Thank you for any help you can give me. Tracey --- avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean. Virus Database (VPS): 0442-3, 10/15/2004 Tested on: 10/17/2004 8:27:59 AM avast! is copyright (c) 2000-2003 ALWIL Software. http://www.avast.com "Hold No Punches.." Rode brings you great shareware/freeware programs with his honest opinions in this weekly column. http://freepctech.com/rode