uninstall avast

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

i wanted to respond to an old post because it’s topic was identical to this, but the forum admonished me to start a new one because of the post’s olden age.

to the point: as a consequence of reinstalling my os, avast now needs to be reinstalled. my first order of business is to uninstall avast - completely. i am most concerned with avast’s database of stored virus signatures: the newly-installed avast will freak out when it sees those thousands(?) of viruses. [but i also want to know that even the noncritical code is removed.]

  • does avast have a removal tool?
  • if not then how can i affect the removal as described? - if you can proffer advice, i certainly welcome it

(btw, what is the name of the file that holds the virus signatures?)

2

You want to install from the scratch?

  1. Uninstall avast from Control Panel first.
  2. Boot.
  3. Use Avast Uninstall for complete uninstallation.
  4. Boot.
  5. Install again the last version.
  6. Boot.
  7. Check and post the results.

C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\Setup\vps-75100.vpu
C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\Setup\vpsm-75103.vpu

But I suggest a fully update and not copying the virus databases from the old installation.

3

this newbie question must be asked: if avast has a “complete” uninstall tool then why would i incur the hassle of a seemingly redundant pre-uninstall by first uninstalling by control panel, followed by a boot?

4

Because that is the safer and fully completed method. The uninstall tool is to solve (remove) any remains of the previous installation that were not removed by the Control Panel way.

5

Well, it’s not only helpfull to uninstall AVAST completely, but to be able to install it after uninstalling another virus tool like ANTIVIR. I had realy trouble and was no able to install AVAST at all on that PC ???

6

Did you have trouble uninstalling Antivir and then installing avast?
How did you uninstall Antivir?

7
C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\Setup\vps-75100.vpu C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\Setup\vpsm-75103.vpu

i can’t find ~\vps-75100.vpu nor ~\vpsm-75103.vpu.

there do exist basenames that are close : vps-74800.vpu [6.85 MB] and vps-75000.vpu [7.15 MB].

shall i assume that these latter are the correct, and only, virus signature files? this matter of exclusivity is extremely important

  • about how many virus signatures exist at this time?
  • why are they divided between 2 (or more??) files?- how do i read .vpu files?- what does ‘vpu’ stand for?
8

I don’t think so as the numbers are smaller than mine…

This was discussed a lot in the past…

  1. There are a marketing issue involved. Companies estimate the number of viruses by high.
  2. There are different counts possible: variants, etc.
  3. There is not an international rule for virus naming, so same virus could be consider one or more by other company.
  4. Scanning settings are very important.
  5. Active viruses (ITW) are really more important then the whole number.
  6. Generic signatures and heuristic detections cannot be really counted as ‘virus detection’.

Well, etc. etc.
Trust avast!

Incremental updates I suppose… a lot of programs do so (check AVG, a-squared, etc.).

You can’t, thanks God. They’re encrypted as they contain the signatures of the viruses.