Avast Inslall; Other A/V Uninstall...Suggestion To Avast Team

Not sure how much the Avast A/V Team trolls the Forum but know a lot of senior folks here help out and contact them.
I’ve been reading tons & tons of posts and for the people that come here with problems a lot of them are based on other conflicting software. Examples are obviously other A/V or perhaps 3rd party firewalls.

Now, perhaps it is not 100% sure that old A/V will cause an issue but the effects of ones that do cause perhaps no ability to get back into the machine…causing FRST fixes, etc. Perhaps the Avast installer should first set restore point, THEN do a scan for any old/previous A/V remnants. If any found, then gives a link for the uninstallers and requires a check box to be clicked to proceed else exits. I know it is not Avast’s job to clean peoples machines but how many people truly read these Forums prior to just hitting install/typical ? Avast could even extend this to other programs is knows as the time of any given installer with a warning. Many software packages do this to warn, some require installation of other programs, some just to ask to close down other open programs. Obviously, my point is to warn the unsuspecting newbie user of this potential.

Just a thought…don’t think the scan would take very long at all to ID the tags that show previous…or even existing…conflict items.

Regards.

Dear thekochs,

old anti-virus leftovers is a big issue, and not just with avast!, but with every A/V. It’s such an issue, that I wrote this article of how to deal with that very exact issue:

http://advantage77.com/blog/2012/02/16/when-all-else-fails-discovery-and-removal-of-antivirus-leftovers/

Sincerely,

J.R. “AutoSandbox Guy” Guthrie

“At this point in time, the Internet should be regarded as an Enemy Weapons System!”

Thanks for the link. Good article, but I wished it went a little further.
For example, if code from a previous AV is still being loaded even though it’s been installed,
where is it loaded from? Surely there has to be a reference in a certain part of the registry
for it to be loaded.

Are left overs to be found in the device manager, perhaps non-plug and play drivers?

If the file is not loaded, but just left in \system32 (for example) it should be harmless.

This area has been danced around, and not really explained for too long.
It would be nice if somebody, who knew the details, could actually provide
a technical explanation.

Dear davexnet,

That question actually touches the final layer of my article, the “Pete Scrape” Here you manually search through the registry, to find those loading points. I have done this many times, in the 30+ years I have sold and supported A/V. This version is specific to “avast”, but you can just substitute, using the other A/V name / manufacturer. For instance, Norton would require searching under “Norton” and “Symantec”, the same as we did with “avast” and “alwil”.

The “WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS” procedure to “scrape” all of avast! remnants from a computer system (AKA Pete Scrape) using the avast! example:

  1. Add remove programs, remove avast!, restart.

  2. Go to safe mode, use avast! removal tool, select avast! version #, restart, and repeat for every avast version ever loaded on that system

  3. In Local disk C:, ProgramFiles, delete “avast” and “Alwil” directories if there. Look here for the other A/V vendors, that you will also have to deal with on a similar basis

  4. In C:\Windows\temp, remove all.

  5. Start, run, type “%temp%” and remove all.

  6. Do a Windows search on all hard disks for instances of “avast” and “Alwil” and delete all.

  7. Start, run, type “regedit” (Windows key + R). Under Hkey, current user, software, and remove “avast” and “Alwil”, then under Hkey, local machine, software, and remove “avast” and “Alwil” (This is specific to Windows XP)

  8. Use CCleaner to remove the rest of any avast! orphaned registry remnants, and restart.

  9. Install avast! and reboot!

  10. Usually, good luck at this point. And you can substitute other manufacturers products into this script. Remember, registry hacking is always risky, so always have a backup before you proceed. It’s kinda like the acknowledgement checkbox in LSPfix, “I know what I’m doing, or, I like to reinstall my operating system”

Sincerely,

J.R. “AutoSandbox Guy” Guthrie

“At this point in time, the Internet should be regarded as an Enemy Weapons System!”

J.R., great reading…thx !

I agree that while the responsibility of ones machine is our own that software like A/V should know how intrusive by nature they are. It is one thing to truly clean a system…as you outlined…including reg cleaner (eg. CCleaner will show un-used trees), etc. However, I think it is another thing for the A/V company installing their software to scan the PC for known files they know can cause conflict. Avast merely has to scan to see what resident or old Prog files or directories that are there and send a warning with perhaps their FAQ link with the uninstallers. Heck, many folks perhaps don’t recall which software may have been resident…in fact a factory load could have been altered and some resident still there.

Anyway, my point is there are many posts where the senior folks on this panel have to help via FRST to remove old A/V that is mucking things up…or Avast that has locked because of old A/V. My suggestion is a simple initial scan to see what conflicts could be there and warn. Many software companies do this during installs…just think Avast should too. Avast clearly wants all users installing their software to keep/pay and be long time customers. The failed…or worse locked up…installs will not be blamed on what users don’t know or forgot about…Avast will get the black eye. I just think a simple extra step up front would allow for better results.

Thanks for the info. I am thinking of a certain situation in Windows XP where
I had uninstalled avast from add/remove program. When I rebooted the system,
security center though an a/v was still installed, even though the avast program
folders were gone.
I had to run the avastclear in safemode for security center to reflect the true situation.

If I had some more time it might have been fun to find out what the security center was looking at
that made it believe an a/v was installed and active, when in fact only some remnants were there.
Presumably, something in the registry.