I recently had to do a restore on my computer because an update mucked some thing up. I restore to a previous time and now AVAST won’t turn on. I tried going to add/remove to repair it, but it won’t let me do anything to the program because it “cannot read the program data from [filepath]”. I tried uninstalling it so I could reinstall, but it won’t let me do that either. Short of manually deleting all the avast files from my program files, I’m not sure what to do. To cover my bases, I have already rebooted a few times, tried downloading and installing a new version in hopes that it would uninstall the old one (no luck), and tried to re-start the program from within the user interface. Suggestions?
I just tried uninstalling it with that, and it told me “the avast! self protection module is enabled”, and how to disable on the troubleshooting menu. I disabled it, but it automatically enables itself again. No good.
I am also having this problem since a system restore earlier today. I am thinking of trying to uninstall avast using the aswclear utility, but do not have any records of my most recent purchase of the software to use to reinstall or download it afterwards. Is there any place in the software that shows this information? I have avast 6.0.1367.0 and operating system is windows 7. Thanks.
But you don’t really need to uninstall anyway. Go to "Add/Remove Programs → avast → change/remove → scroll down and “repair”. Once the process finishes, please reboot.
If you are not able to uninstall normally then you can use this tool to uninstall avast in safe mode http://www.avast.com/uninstall-utility, first download a fresh copy of the latest avast and the removal tool supplied and save, then reboot your system into safe mode and run the uninstall tool for all versions of avast ever installed 4,5,6, once completed reboot back to normal mode and run a cleaning tool such as CCleaner to tidy up.
Now install your fresh avast copy, hopefully version 7
Same here - I used the program to uninstall it in safe mode, and it looks like I’ve successfully removed all things Avast from my pc. Now to reinstall, with fingers crossed that I don’t have the same problem with the latest version. Thanks for your help everyone.