PLEASE STOP THE PHONE SUPPORT SCAM!

Yes it has been frustrating and is hard to understand the persistence in the use of 3rd. Party support

avast! represents a real conundrum for me. I have been using avast! since 2004 (my God that UI was horrid!) on all of my machines. I started a small IT business in 2005 and have recommended and installed avast! on hundreds of machines since then. Generally I consider avast! to be among the best overall antivirus/antimalware products available. That said, there are some things about avast! which annoy the CRAP out of me - and the phone scam tops the list.

I understand AVAST is a business and that their goal is to make money. But this phone scam is simply dishonest and reprehensible. Any goodwill I’ve had for AVAST is gone as a result.

For those who still don’t understand exactly what’s happening, the scam goes like this. A not so savvy user has a problem with avast! on her computer so she visits AVAST’s website looking for help. She quickly sees free phone technical support is available and calls the number provided. The support technician remotely connects to her computer, quickly finds several critical problems, and offers to fix them for a fee, often including a long term support contract, ranging in price from $100-$300 USD. Of course, their are actually no problems, but it’s easy to deceive the unsophisticated user simply by showing her a few logfiles, DLLs, and TaskManager and throwing in some technospeak. So now she has paid $300 for nothing.

The management team and board at AVAST should be ashamed. Without any argument possible, they are crooks. I am sorry to be so honest, but it is what it is.

Registries do NOT need to be “cleaned”.

-Noel

When you run the removal tool from a third party AV, you are in essence cleaning the registry of all items not removed by the regular
uninstall method. This is needed before you replace your AV.
Therefore, there are times when the registry needs to be cleaned.

Make up whatever terms you want.

It’s clear that deletion of items from a database maintained by other programs is perfectly safe. How could I have been so blind? You need to delete everything from your registry to ensure it’s as clean as it possibly can be. Only then can you be happy.

-Noel

It would have been a lot easier to admit that there are times when cleaning (deleting) information from the registry is needed.
I know, it hurts to admit even you can occasionally be incorrect in your statements.

Perhaps I haven’t been clear. People who know how to keep Windows in tip-top shape for years and who know how Windows works do not run “registry cleaner” applications.

Nothing about the registry needs to be “cleaned”. Windows keeps itself tuned up just fine.

The term “cleaning” was invented to support sales of products that you don’t need. Call it the modern “door to door brush salesman” approach if you like. It’s a self-actualizing market. Some of the applications might not do harm every time you run them, but rest assured that some bozo writing a “registry cleaner” application can’t possibly know everything in YOUR particular system that might rely upon data in the database, and make no mistake, “cleaning” is another term for “deleting data”.

By requesting that some 3rd party application delete data from your database you’re doing no less than risking destabilizing your system.

If you have specific problems with applications that won’t uninstall themselves properly or completely, seek out SPECIFIC REMEDIES from the maker of those products. You’ll note that Avast offers an “AvastClean” application of their very own. They do not point you to some registry cleaner.

But hey, go on and run whatever applications you like, including registry cleaners. And while you’re at it go on believing that Windows must be reinstalled regularly.

-Noel

I don’t recommend deep registry cleaning for novice users but CCleaner is quite safe I’ve found over the years, many programs don’t have their own removal/clean up tools and even when they do they still leave behind a lot of rubbish and a light cleaning tool such as CCleaner can help remove some problematic leftovers.

Even after running vendor removal tools I still find 10’s to hundreds of leftovers of just about all programs through the registry and sometimes still remnants in Programs - Program Data -user folders and the Window 32 Driver folders ::slight_smile: