New to Avast, kinda

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I have come back to using Avast, not that I was that knowledgable with it before. But… had serious problems with Norton. In fact even after uninstalling Norton Internet Security and even using their web site programs to completely rid myself of it, there is still a ‘leftover’ that they can’t help me with. My firewall says that Norton is still running??? Go figure.

Anyway I am trying to learn how Avast works and will possibly upgrade to the pay version. So far the ‘free’ version is doing Ok, I think.

One thing is I don’t understand how it works with my Outlook Mail. Whenever I send or receive a message an icon comes up in the lower tray, instead of “in Outlook” like it used to??? It is the send or receive icon I guess; when I place my cursor over it it indicates it is an AVAST item???

Anyone clear that one up for me.

thanks

2

Well the first thing is to ensure that Norton is fully removed otherwise avast may not function as expected. A link worth looking at (if this wasn’t what you tried), which is a program removal tool that can remove the remnants of a number of different Norton Programs:
Removing your Norton program using SymNRT. There is usually a live update thingy (sorry about the use of technical terms ;D) left behind with Norton.

Download the Norton removal tool, disconnect, run the tool and reboot. I would suggest that you then uninstall avast, reboot, reinstall avast and boot.

Are you using MS Outlook, not outlook express ?
If so you don’t need the Internet Mail provider enabled.

3

I have used ‘every’ program Norton has to offer, including the one you mentioned.
I am using Outlook(office 2000) not Express.

thanks

4

First me must be sure you’re clean of Norton 8)

  1. Remove NAV through Add/Remove programs from Control Panel. Boot.
  2. Use Symantec removal tool (browse their site to get it, there are one for each antivirus series). Removing your Norton program using SymNRT.
  3. Boot.
  4. Install avast! Boot.
  5. See what you get.

Then you should be sure that avast plugin is not disabled into MS Outlook:
Outlook 2000 > Tools menu > Options > Other > Advanced Options > Add-In Manager.

5

hi guys

could it help if I say that I am using RegSeeker to remove any bits of programs when the offficials one don’t do the job propely.

Reg seeker is a multilanguage with a “find in registery option”, free using. You type Norton and Symantec and that should help you to remove everything
Official link site is www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm

6

I too use RegSeeker, it is powerful (and dangerous), it doesn’t have any help file or categorisation, safe to remove, etc. and I wouldn’t recommend it for a novice user. So you really need to know what you are doing or you could cause serious problems with your system. It even has a warning to that effect on the opening page.

Windows regedit also has a find option, but I wouldn’t recommend manual editing even more dangerous that a third party registry editor.

Always back-up the registry prior to editing.

7

I totally agree with you DavidR

I do use it when nothing else works. And I built a restauration point before, in order to go back to previous step if anything goes wrong. Plus I have a system backup.

Over tools can be used such as CCleaner or RegCleaner. They all have an action on the registery. So, they are all potentially dangerous if you don’t know what you do when you start playing with the registery. But they all allow you to backup before deletion. Another thing to do is to export the registery to a safe place on disk using regedit command. But as you say, it is dangerous to play with it if you don’t know (and even if you do know)

Talking about Norton, it can help, if you run XP or 2000, to disable the services (Control pannel/ administration tools/services)