Please help! I'm begging you! I need to UNINSTALL!!!

system · 2007-03-21T18:44:49.000Z

Well, every single post received help but mine and the website hasn’t contacted me either so I’m trying to uninstall this thing so I can buy one that has support but I ran into ANOTHER brick wall after killing hours on this for nothing.

The FAQ’s reply to an uninstall question that needs more than add/remove (as I do). The reply is that the uninstall utility avclean should be run that’s available on the website…BUT…if avast4 was installed, one needs the avclean4 utility.

OK, what’s the secret to finding this please? The uninstall page has only the one, avclean. A search came up empty as did a search here. Where am I?..The Twilight Zone?!

Does ANYBODY in the pc world offer support or good instructions? How do they expect us to pay once we’ve tried the free stuff?!
I don’t get it.

PLEEZE…anyone?!

Bluesman · 2007-03-21T18:55:56.000Z

Cabinetdude post:1:

OK, what’s the secret to finding this please?

I did not find avclean, but I found aswClear

http://www.avast.com/eng/avast-uninstall-utility.html

DavidR · 2007-03-21T19:02:00.000Z

Download the avast! Uninstall Utility, find it here and save it to your HDD so you can find it later.

The file to download is aswClear.exe so I don’t know what FAQ you read.

I saw your other post (prior to your edit), unfortunately I couldn’t offer any suggestion other than what you had tried, this probably should have gone there as it would have bumped it up to the top of the list of posts.

Seeing your edit in the other post and this post your installation almost certainly didn’t complete successfully or has become corrupt. Have (or did) you another AV installed in this system, if so what was it and how did you get rid of it ?

I’m trying to find something in the forums that may be related, but I will leave you with this and if I find it I will post again.

igor0 · 2007-03-21T19:13:54.000Z

I really don’t know what’s so complicated about it.
If you go to our web pages and browse e.g. through Support / FAQ avast! / Installation/Uninstallation - avast! uninstall untility is the very first link. Alternatively, you can use the “Download” menu and select avast! uninstall utility. What easier way can there be??
(Btw, you probably don’t need this tool at all - the ordinary Control Panel / Add/Remove Programs should work just fine.)

Don’t know how you came to the conclusion that you need another “avclean4” tool…

system · 2007-03-21T20:44:30.000Z

Cabinetdude post:1:

The FAQ’s reply to an uninstall question that needs more than add/remove (as I do). The reply is that the uninstall utility avclean should be run that’s available on the website…BUT…if avast4 was installed, one needs the avclean4 utility.

I have seen this uninstall question and reply on one of the fraudulent websites offering an “avast package.” I don’t know whether this may be the source of the problems described by Cabinetdude, but it seems possible.

(quoted from that website–“avastsoft”)
“I can’t uninstall avast! via “ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS” in control panel. What else can I do?”

“You can download our uninstall utility called AvClear or AvClear4 (it depends on the version of avast! installed on your computer) which will remove it. Please find more information by clicking here.”

There is no link on that website to any uninstall utility.

edit: added “missing link” statement inadvertently omitted

system · 2007-03-22T07:52:22.000Z

After a couple hours of installing, trying to activate and searching for a solution was wasted, I decided to lose Avast for good. I was so tired and frustrated that I tried to save a couple bucks and it ended up costing me; I could’ve bought 3 or 4 years worth of paid anti-virusware with the money I lost.
I was a lucky dog last week & I got a call for 25 rollout drawers for Ozzy’s music storage in his office & I was gonna go to my shop & work on em last night but since my foot was still impersonating Elephant Man from a spider bite, I decided to clean up my pc instead. Bad move!

I really don't know what's so complicated about it.

Well, of course you don’t Sir. You are with the Alwil Team & a moderator of a support forum with what?..almost 5,000 posts? I’m a dope without a pc clue asking for help and I have something goes wrong. I’m not as smart as you. Course, 10 minutes to Wapner. But go ahead and feel free to talk down to others. Especially after you find out that if you click onto the first place YOU suggest for an uninstall utility, YOUR webpages tell users to use a utility that is non-existent. Yet you have no clue as to how I came up with the idea I needed a utility YOU tell me to use. How is this NOT complicated, please?
WHY is it not complicated that a website tells you to use avClear4 if uninstalling Avast4 but avClear for earlier versions of Avast and yet provide you with ONE link to a thing called aswClear.exe? Please, tell me why I should use that one and NOT the one they say to use. What’s wrong with my synapses that cause this confusion? Perhaps I don’t have enough acetylcholine to bridge the gap across my huge neuromuscular junctions that were perhaps widened from LSD trips in the 80’s. Or maybe Ozzy gave me contact Parkinsonian Syndrome. I’m an excellent driver.

I put a Soundblaster card in my brand new pc last June in the wrong order & as a result I’ve wasted maybe 20-30 hours trying to fix it & I still haven’t heard a sound from my pc since I got it. 10 minutes to Wapner.

HP, the manufacturer of my pc & all-in-one, can’t even figure out how to re-install some of the software for my all-in-one & my pc. I’ve logged over twenty hours with HP support alone, forget the days I spent alone trying. In fact, I returned my 2610xi to Costco for a full refund after 1.5 yrs. swearing up & down I would never buy HP again & came home with a HP C6180 for the exact same price, a nice upgrade. Guess what? Same problem! Another 20 hours dead so far. The manufacturer can’t get the pc’s Photosmart Premier software back in nor can they get me Photosmart Essential or ANY of the extra software that comes with the some-in-one, that I used to love to use, a great Panorama function, calendars, cards, etc… They can’t remove the old webreg thingy and even had me, a novice, screwing around deleting things in the registry! I got the printer to work when they couldn’t but it took me forever. I have a stack of fix-it papers over an inch thick relating to this issue!

And to boot, I don’t know how to do a total recovery because I tried 5, count em 5 different backup utilities, wasted 50 discs or so and countless hours trying to backup! I’m a friggin’ cartoon. I don’t get it. They either failed or my cd/dvdw drive would fail or whatever. I don’t know what to do. I finally got Stompsoft to finish a backup of my media files and 8 dvd’s into it, it failed.
I’ve had a brand new hard drive for 3 months but I’m afraid to try & install it; I’ll screw it up somehow and besides, I don’t know what to transfer onto it in order to do my recovery even if I install it right. (internal).
How about this! HP, the maker of the pc tells you to make recovery discs when you buy the machine and they say you have one shot at it. That’s it.
This is their fabulous alternative to providing me with XP discs to relaod the OS should I ever need to. Thanks Gates! He so damn concerned about losing money!I wonder who he’s gonna extort next!
HP says to make a diskette with a floppy drive as part of the ‘recovery system’. A floppy disc drive didn’t even come with the stock a1410n!

WHEW! I think I may have drifted a bit off-course…I do feel a bit better though. As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by me, I had enough of Almost Avast so I wanted to make sure I uninstalled correctly.

Read the following process and do it yourself and you’ll see why I am/was so concerned about finding avClear4…and these “questions” will be answered…

If you go to our web pages and browse e.g. through Support / FAQ avast! / Installation/Uninstallation - avast! uninstall untility is the very first link. Alternatively, you can use the "Download" menu and select avast! uninstall utility. What easier way can there be?? Don't know how you came to the conclusion that you need another "avclean4" tool...

Did you actually READ the instructions for “inst…/uninst…”?
If you did, you would see how I came to the conclusion I need the avClear4, Mr. Moderator. And here’s an easier way.
An easier way could be to NOT confuse dummys like me by telling them they need avClear4, NOT aswClear, to uninstall Avast4, in their own FAQ’s that you guys aren’t even aware of (no offense to you, to the author & whoever approved it, yes) and in the same sentence, provide a link to the utilities only to find one utility there aswClear.exe & no mention of avClear4 anywhere else on the site, the one they say I need to use. Do a search. CHICKEN POT PIE?! OK, Look sir, I apologize for my sarcasm. I reacted to your talking down to me. That is so wrong dude! Treat people with dignity man! What’s up?! We’re all the same when it comes down to it. You gotta believe it. Besides, you would fare better to be nice for selfish reasons only. Cuz everything comes back to us. Good or bad. When you’re kind, humble and treat others as equals, you get a great feeling right? It all comes back to you tenfold and life just rolls along real nice. The same goes for the reverse. You feel like crap and things don’t go well. Itall comes back. Little Feat do a song called On Your Way Down. It goes…The people you refuse on your way up…You Might Meet Up…On Your Way Dow…ow…ow-n. You think they pulled that one out of a hat?! No way man. That’s the way it is bro. Live the life!

This is very similar to the FAQ on Avast where I found the avClear4 prank… no…it’s exactly the same…read on…

"I can't uninstall avast! via "ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS" in control panel. What else can I do?"
“You can download our uninstall utility called AvClear or AvClear4 (it depends on the version of avast! installed on your computer) which will remove it. Please find more information by clicking here.”

By the way, I copied and pasted these URL’s as I click-toed through the tulips, in exactly this order…

First,
I used a link from their email to me to get to their homepage…

http://www.avast.com/

Then I did a search for “uninstall” and got this result page…

http://www.avast.com/i_kat_66.php?words=uninstall&fnc=search&lang=cze%2Fprogramatorccold.html&x=8&y=1

Clicked the ‘page down’ key 5 times and a short way from the top is the soon to be famous, “installation/uninstallation” section of Avast4 FAQ’s. Uh oh! Clicking onto “inst/uninst” gets this page with this familiar FAQ…Oh boy!..it aint no stinkin ‘Avastsoft’ page!..
Scroll to the bottom of this page…My oh MY…

http://www.avast.com/eng/faq-installation-problems.html

     ......uh oh!...............for this...

Q: I can’t uninstall avast! via “ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS” in control panel. What else can I do?

A: You can download our uninstall utility called AvClear or AvClear4 (it depends on the version of avast! installed on your computer) which will remove it. Please find more information by clicking here.

And of course, when you click “here” you get one utility, awsClear.exe Below info C&P’d

avast! uninstall utility
Sometimes it´s not possible to uninstall avast! the standard way - using the ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS in control panel. In this case, you can use our uninstallation utility aswClear.

How to uninstall our software using aswClear.exe:

Download aswClear.exe on to your desktop
Open (execute) it
If you installed avast! in a different folder than the default, browse for it. (Note: Be careful! The content of any folder you choose will be deleted!)
Click REMOVE
Restart your computer

OK, where’s the avClear4 they say to use?! And where the heck did I come
up with this information?!

By the time I found the awsClear but no awsClear4, I was outright p’d off at myself for losing so much time & money on freeware with little support. (I still have yet to hear from Avast)

Lisandro · 2007-03-22T12:25:00.000Z

Plain and simple, to uninstall avast:

Use Add/Remove Control Panel. If it fails, generally makes me think you have another antivirus installed or badly uninstalled from your computer.
Boot.
Use avast uninstall tool: http://www.avast.com/eng/avast-uninstall-utility.html
Boot.

system · 2007-03-22T13:23:14.000Z

Cabinetdude, after reading through the FAQ section on avast’s website (OK, I should have done that before my previous post), I completely understand your confusion. The outdated FAQ on the fraudulent site is obviously just a copy of the outdated FAQ on the avast site, which I would certainly find confusing. I had not read the FAQ since installing avast (free) on my daughter’s computer about a year ago. I have had to uninstall avast only once, on another computer, and did not refer to the FAQ then because I had already seen uninstall instructions posted by “Tech” here on the forums while browsing for information in general. (I do not mean to suggest you should have done that; I think I just got lucky.)

With most of the support here being offered by avast users, the timing may not always be perfect, depending on whether someone who knows a possible solution to your problem is actually awake when you post, but it is nearly always fast.

By the way, my little fragment of a pc clue is usually lost in a mountain of clutter, so I depend on the information I find here and on some other forums, as well as a few computer-savvy friends.

system · 2010-01-23T02:30:14.000Z

I know this post is old, but I’m having kind of the same problem.

I uninstalled avast. restarted… and avast loaded…
I try to uninstall it again (I’m just learning you needed the utility) and it said the installation or uninstallation was corrupt or whatever.
So I come here, learn about the utility, try it…

Avast has a self-defense mechanism, says I have to disable it.
So I go where it says, uncheck it. Try again.
Said the same thing.
I open avast again, go to maintenance, troubleshooting, and self-defense mode is still checked… -.-

So I uncheck it AGAIN…
and again…
and again…
and again…

its still recheckint itself…
now really… um… wtf…?

Chim · 2010-01-23T05:21:17.000Z

For me, in recent times, the plain ole Control Panel Add / Remove Programs method worked.
Just for the heck of it, I then tried running the avast Uninstall Utility and did encounter the Self Defense mechanism. I then opted to NOT run that.

I may or may not have then subsequently manually deleted any ALWIL / avast Folders I found.

Then I just installed avast (4.8) again and everything’s working fine.

system · 2010-01-23T08:02:13.000Z

Just start your computer in safe mode by pressing F8 during boot secuence then uninstall avast.

DavidR · 2010-01-23T15:10:47.000Z

Chim post:10:

For me, in recent times, the plain ole Control Panel Add / Remove Programs method worked.
Just for the heck of it, I then tried running the avast Uninstall Utility and did encounter the Self Defense mechanism. I then opted to NOT run that.

Had you actually read the page where you download the uninstall utility form it will tell you that you should run it from safe mode. That is because avast doesn’t run in safe mode, so no self-defence.

As has been stated many times, the uninstall utility is only there if you have any uninstall problem when using the windows add remove programs uninstall.

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