incomplete installation(Avast Premier 2017), now can't uninstall

On my recently purchased WinXP computer I found Avast Premier 2017 so I tried to install it but the installation never completed. And now the computer is almost non functional, including the internet which is not connecting any more. In Control Panel/add or remove programs I’ve tried to run repair and also to run remove, but keep getting the error that Setup is still running so I have to wait until it finishes. Which is never does, and after many reboots and re-tries Setup is apparently still running.

I found Avastclear.exe on this website but when I try to run it I get the error "avastclear.exe is not a valid Win32 application.

So I’m stuck and need to completely uninstall Avast so I can get my computer back (I’m typing this on a different computer). I’ve tried running a different uninstall program but it seems to be blocked from running.

Can someone give me a different way to uninstall Avast? I would really appreciate any help.

Using WinXP sp3

Hi,

If the uninstall utility and other methods don’t work, I suggest trying the methods below.

  1. Please try deleting all Avast Antivirus files from your computer. You can do this by launching Windows Explorer, and going to the path C:\Program Files\Avast Software and deletung everything in it. You will also have to delete C:\Program Files\Common Files\Avast Software as well.

  2. You could try using Safe Mode with Networking. To do this, you must follow the steps here: https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-start-windows-xp-in-safe-mode-2624542. If you are done with entering safe mode, see if you can use the internet to search.

  3. If you have made a system restore point before, you could try restoring your system to that state.

  4. You can kill the setup process, since it is currently running. You might also want to disable its startup application host, too. To open task manager in XP, right click the taskbar and select Task manager. If you do not see this screen, then you can also use the keyboard shortcut, which is Ctrl + Alt + Del. Then, try to kill the process of the setup system, and uninstall Avast using the uninstall utility.

  5. Try the uninstall utility again, but in Safe Mode. It requires Safe Mode to be able to delete all Avast files from your computer.

  6. Avast has ended support for Avast on Windows XP, now the last version available on XP is very low in quality. I strongly recommend updating to the latest Windows version. His vould fix the “Incorrect Win32” issue, as Windows XP and Windows 10 might use different exe formats. This is the best expected issue. If you are still having trouble, remove your drive from your XP, put it in a Windows 10-installed device, then run the Avast Uninstall Utility.

  7. You can repair Avast in Settings. If Avast cannot open, you could try downloading Avast Free Antivirus source code files, and moving them into the default Avast installation directory.

If this helped or worked, let me know!

Thanks for all your suggestions. What an ordeal this has been…Avast screwed up everything on this computer. When I could start my browser or email programs, they wouldn’t connect…and I couldn’t shut them down. They just wouldn’t shut down, and when I tried to delete their processes in Task Manager I was denied access…same thing when I tried to delete the Avast processes, denied access. I also couldn’t shut down the computer in the normal way, nothing worked except pulling the plug or turning off the computer itself from the off/on switch. ;;

I tried System Restore but there was only one Restore Point from midnight just before this problem occurred. And even that wouldn’t work.
I also tried stopping the Services connected to Avast, but was denied that also. I couldn’t even set them to Disabled.

I mentioned that I had tried the add/remove programs in Control Panel, many times but that didn’t work. I also used ERUNT to restore the Registry from a few days previous. After that I tried the add/remove again and this time when I ran Remove there was an Uninstall option. I ran that and the Avast uninstall started up but it was broken and wouldn’t go past the first command line, and the green bar was stuck at about 1/4". I gave that many hours to complete before I gave up…and of course Avast doesn’t give you a way to quit the Uninstall, so I had to pull the computer plug again. The great thing about WinXP is that you can pull the plug while it’s working, and that doesn’t add much time(a few extra minutes) to the next reboot. I had to do that once on a Win7 computer and it took more than a day just to be able to start up again.

I also mentioned I tried Avastclear.exe but it gave me the “not a valid Win32 application” bs. This time I tried the older Avastclear10r4.exe, that’s the one for computers without SSE2 instructions(which my i7 computer definitely has). This older one actually worked, though it was tricky since it couldn’t reboot my computer into Safe Mode since my computer, under the influence of the Avast installation, wouldn’t shut down. So I had to reboot(ie: pull the plug) in Safe Mode and then run Avastclear10r4 again, and this time it worked. Gloriously, after a reboot, no more Avast…the internet works again, I can shut down the browsers and email normally, I can delete processes in Task Manager, So far, all the little things that stopped working, are back working again.

So thanks again for your help. It’s good to know there is an active help forum here.

And I’m curious to know if there is a way to run Avast in a manual mode, where I use it to scan files and folders of my choosing, and I chose what happens to suspect files (ie…not an automatic quarantine/deletion), and I chose which sections/modes I want to be active. Is all this possible, or is Avast one of the “my way or the highway” antivirus programs?

I am not sure for older versions, but I do know that Avast has a way to let you manually choose what to do when it finds a threat. You can do so in Settings > Core Shields. It also has a Passive Mode which turns off the Real-time Protection, and this is automatically turned on when you install another antivirus to prevent conflicts.