I accidentally installed two antivirus applications on my computer (Windows XP)
Now, when I boot, the computer continually restarts itself. I am unable to get into Safe Mode, and selecting Last Known Good Configuration doesn’t help.
I want to continue to use Avast, but for the time being I must uninstall it. My question is, will the uninstall utility available on the website work from the Windows XP Recovery Console, or do you need to be in the Windows GUI?
If the uninstall utility will not work, is there any way to have only one Antivirus start up so the computer will boot?
I would expect that you need to be in the windows gui, however, you should be able to boot into safe mode as avast isn’t started automatically in safe mode. From there you should be able to uninstall avast and reboot.
What happens when you keep tap, tap, tapping on the F8 key during boot ?
Or (trying not to insult your intelligence here) how are you trying to get into safe mode ?
I actually cannot boot into Safe Mode. I have tried entering by tapping the F8 key as the system is booting up. I have also tried Safe Mode with Networking and Safe Mode with Command Prompt, but the computer is rebooting when these options are selected as well.
There is one other way that I tried getting into Safe Mode. After the computer reboots, it sends you to a screen which says “We apologize for the inconvenience, but WIndows did not start normally…” You then have 30 seconds to select an option, but these options are the same ones you see on the F8 screen, so I’d imagine it’s the same thing.
The recovery console doesn’t run ANY programs so this includes the avast uninstaller…
You can try to delete (or rename) the files manually though. Start with the avast drivers in the \windows\system32\drivers folder
AavmKer4.sys
aswMon*.sys
aswRdr.sys
aswTdi.sys