I click remove and nothing happens. I did shut down the protection because that helps with the uninstalling.
Did you try the removal tool? Go to the avast home page, it’s under downloads.
Do I have to shut down the protection before doing this?
yes you should
Not necessarily… I mean, both the Control Panel and the uninstall tool will remove files in use on next boot.
Anyway, disabling won’t hurt the uninstallation 8)
On a side note, whenever you see symptoms like “I try Add/Remove Programs → avast and nothing happens” or “I try to invoke avast update and nothing happens”, the cure that almost always works is to kill any running instances of the process “avast.setup” (or avast01.setup, avast02.setup etc. - if these are running as well). This can be done from the Processes tab in the Task Manager.
Cheers
Vlk