Avast removed all drivers in my Windows 7 system32\drivers folder during uninsta

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hello all,

This is my first post here and unfortunately very very sad!
Please forgive me then any bad formatting, breaking forum rules etc, etc.
Feedback on that is welcome though.

I had to uninstall avast because it was blocking debugging in eclipse. This information is not essential for this message and I post it only to provide history and context of the case. More information about avast preventing eclipse from debugging can be found here:
http://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php/t/588721/
and here:
https://feedback.avast.com/responses/eclipse-debug-functionality-not-working-after-upgrade-to-avast-2014.

All the solutions were saying - UNINSTALL AVAST! So I did so.
The good news is that the machine rebooted well (although I’m a bit uncertain why and how), but soon I found that previously happily running OpenVPN service can’t be started any more due to missing dependency, namely driver tap0901.
A quick visit to c:\windows\system32\drivers folder showed the whole disaster - drivers directory does not contain drivers any more.

Now with the precaution that I’m by far not a windows administration guru, I believe that there should be some drivers there (actually many of them).

My question is:

  • Does anyone has an idea how to restore the drivers? Does windows have some drivers cache or alike?

Can Avast people make a statement to describe the problem and preferably provide a simple and cheep solution?

Kind regards,

Pavlin

2

Do you have the driver disc that came with your machine?
If not you may need to go the you computers manufacturer website to download missing drivers.

3

Hi actually all you need to do is use system restore to go back to before you removed Avast and all the drivers will be back. But of course then you have to figure out how to remove Avast without it removing anything else.

4

A few more details would be nice.

OS? Any other security software?
If uninstalled how was it removed, control panel or vendors removal tool?

I’m thinking something along the lines of possible software conflicts.