Yesterday I installed Avast Free after finding it as PcMag´s 2018 top rated free virusscanner (after the McAfee 2 year plan that came with my Lenovo laptop ran out). This to add further protection while finishing my thesis writing but not wanting to inmediatly commit to a license for an untested by me new anti virus program.
After the lengthy install process my Windows10 (64bit, fully updated) started, showed (after unusual slow loading after user login entering) the desktop and… aprox 30 sec to 1 minute later froze totally. No movement possible with the mouse nor through keyboard shortcuts.
Since then, I´ve tried literally everything I could think of to get the inmediate acces to my laptop I need.
Everything from racing against the clock in those 30 seconds of acces to try to get to configuration screen and de-install, but cant get there in time, same for bootconfigurations, to trying to get into command prompt to remove any available Avast files. Can´t find them.
On top of everything, I can´t get my Lenovo into its recovery boot menu through the dedicated button that would normally restart the laptop from the Lenovo-boot and backup dedicated partition of the harddrive. I cant even acces the bios menu for some reason.
NOthing works, Avas´ crash wont allow me acces to anything.
So, right now I removed my Avast-infected Harddrive from my laptop and attached it to my way to old Windows Vista Desktop in the hope to get whatever Avast installe is lingering there of of it as soon as possible. I can fully acces the drive, both partitions but cant find any trace of the Avast programfiles, apart from the logs in the program data directory.
Whoever helps me is quite literally the hero of the world of the day (well, unless someone in Syria gives his life to protect two hospitals full of children and kittens or something, but apart from that,)
I didnt. I just shut it down as far as I could after the ‘your subscription ended’ messages started to come. A slight annoyance but at least my laptop kept working. That annoyance let me to try Avast, which without help to remove might turn out to have been the worst and most destructive decision of my life :o Please focus on helpful replying, not here to chat
That wasn’t a chat. You can’t have two resident AV’s on your system.
How to Successfully Install Avast http://goo.gl/VLXde
Download the removal tools to a usb. Boot your system into Safe Mode, remove McAfee, Remove Avast.
Reboot the system then do a clean install of Avast.
Your system lock-up issue was caused by McAfee and Avast antivirus conflict. McAfee was still running when you installed Avast.
If you are successful, you will find Windows Defender is running as your default antivirus on normal system boot. Microsoft has it set up so that a third-party antivirus such as avast will cause Windows Defender to deactivate automatically during a normal third-party installation.
Just so you know, you cannot uninstall Windows Defender as it is a part of Windows 10. Windows Defender will not run when a third-party antivirus program is installed and running.