I have been using Avast Home Edition for a few years and love it, saved me many times. I want to install the new Avast 5 but do I have to uninstall 4 first.
thank you,
Joan.
For best results, yes.
Yes,
you need to delete 4.8 at first.
NO! You don’t have to uninstall first! 8)
Which one is the truth ones?
2 voices versus 1 voice between need to uninstall or directly upgrade?
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: :
I don’t know. But there are a few posts around this issue, to be sure. If you browse the forum you’ll see that.
Some users have reported problems installing 5 over 4, and some have not.
What I would do is try it, because there are some advantages involved in doing so (Such as certain settings and the registration being kept, if I’ve read correctly) and if that causes problems or slowdowns that a couple of restarts won’t fix, do a full uninstall and fresh install of 5.
look whatever the V5 setup does or is able to do with V4, it’s obvious, like with any program upgrade, that you will get better results if you uninstall the old one first, reboot and install the new one (reboot again, even if not prompted).Especially in this case where V5 isn’t an update to V4 but a completely new software 
edit: forget about V4 settings, V5 cannot use anything from V4 configuration. As to registration, I read it was retained from V4 pro, although I don’t know how, as you need a license file and not a key for V5, may be downloaded automatically. If not: http://www.avast.com/resend-license.php As to V5 “free”, you V4/home license is lost anyway and there’s an automated new registration process that takes 2 seconds to complete from the UI itself (not even needed if you do the upgrade I think, but again, you’re better off installing V5 from scratch)
+1
Joan,
If you had a paid version of 4.8 previously then it might? be worth trying to install over the top of the old Pro version to retain the paid registration, however there is no advantage at all as far as I can see where the free home Edition is concerned, since a new registration of V5 for a full year once installed is now a very easy process that only takes only a couple of seconds.
The downside of “trying” an over the top installation is that if the same occurs as happened to me, it will leave your PC only capable of booting to a command line screen with no windows GUI safe mode and the need to manually uninstall V5 to restore windows operation and then the need to try to clean up the remnants of both V4.8 and V5, where as it is a straight forward process to uninstall V4.8, clean up and reboot before doing a clean install of the new V5.
Whilst it has been OK for some, others have had less than optimum results from over the top installations including odd failures and sluggish operation. The choice is yours but a clean install after removing the previous version would be my advice.
Whilst it has been OK for some, others have had less than optimum results from over the top installations including odd failures and sluggish operation. The choice is yours but a clean install after removing the previous version would be my advice.+1
My advice (based on recent experience) is to uninstall 4.8 first do a clean install of v5, and upgrade the 4.8 licence to 5 (free). An OTT upgrade does not ‘catch’ the licence…well it didn’t for me. v5 also works properly after a clean install
I’ve now updated my 8 computers from 4.8 to 5.0. 2 Pro and 6 Free versions.
Just installed 5.0 on top of 4.8, and no problems at all
Computers are running XP, Vista or Win7.
Everything is running just fine!! 8)
No problems with the v5 overinstall of v4.8 on WinXP Pro SP3. That may be different of one is running multiple security programs resident. All I had running at the time was Avast 4.8.13.68 and the older software firewall, Sygate.
had no problems installing Avast 5.0337.0 (free version) from scratch or over Avast 4.8 (Home Edition free version) on Windows 7 64bit, it was the Professional version of Avast 5 that gave me problems, i would unistall avast 4.8 reboot then install avast 5, you can use your existing home edition license key in the registration tab in avast 5
You should uninstall first.
Note: if you start a v5 install then cancel the installation, it wrecks the v4 installation. v4 is removed from add/remove programs, and the v4 services are left behind, which then cannot start. v5 cannot start either. The solution here is to remove v5, which you had cancelled anyway, reboot, then reinstall v5 (or v4) fully.
Also you need to turn off internet options proxy server 12080 (if you are using it) before uninstalling v4, then switch it back on after installing v5. (This enables internet access in between installations if there is a problem you wish to research).
If you are concerned about not being protected by avast temporarily in between installations, disable your lan connection temporarily.
If you have a paid subscription, suggest you contact avast support first before doing anything.
Avast is brilliant, but the v5 installer should have handled issues I’ve mentioned here. The safest bet is to uninstall first.