Avast WEBforum
Other => General Topics => Topic started by: sgd on January 30, 2011, 09:03:03 AM
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Not that I'm blaming Avast, I clearly did something stupid here, but, I'm afraid I might make things worse if I don't ask for guidance... I run windows xp pro BTW. Let me describe the problem(s) from the beginning. I have several accounts and I noticed this passed week that sometimes, when I started windows, I was unable to login into my account, because the password window just wouldn't come up. I thought "oh oh, virus/malware trouble???" Until then, I was running the free version of AVG, so I decided to get serious, and get avast pro. Unfortunately I made two mistakes: 1) during the installation process, I clicked the license file; realising my mistake, I cancelled the installation, and started over. 2) I did not uninstall AVG before installing avast.
Now even when I can login, well first my computer looks busy starting up, with the sand-timer thingie showing up, but it never gets to the stage where any icon shows up at the bottom right of my screen near the time (sorry for my lack of technical terms, I can't remember what that bar is called). Then whenever I try doing anything, my computer just hangs. Once I succeeded in checking what processes were running, and there didn't seem to be anything running, not even avast (ok so some small numbers would flicker on near different things every so often, too fast for me to read, and then go back to 0). And then it froze anyway (I'm using another computer right now). I'm tempted to try and uninstall both avg and avast (although I'm not sure how to do so safely), maybe run a registry clean up thing, and install avast again afterwards... but, since it has become abundantly clear that I am clueless what I'm doing, I thought I'd better stop and ask for advice... what should I try to do?
Thank you so much for your help.
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Hi sgd, download fresh copy of avast here , pick your version- Free AV: http://files.avast.com/iavs5x/setup_av_free.exe
Pro AV: http://files.avast.com/iavs5x/setup_av_pro.exe
Internet Security: http://files.avast.com/iavs5x/setup_ais.exe
download avast uninstall tool here http://www.avast.com/uninstall-utility
also download avg removal tool here http://uninstallers.blogspot.com/
I would also recomend you download malwarebyte's http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php the free version will be fine, save all these download's to your desktop or download's, wherever you can find them again.
Now go to remove programs and uninstall avast then reboot into safe mode and run the avast uninstall tool (tap f8 while booting for safe mode) once done reboot again into normal mode, now back to remove program's again and delet avg and reboot back into safe mode again and run the avg removal tool and reboot again into normal mode.
Now's a good time to run ccleaner if you have or the disc cleanup tool will do if you dont have it, now run the install exe for malwarebytes and once installed update it then run the program and let it fix whatever it find's, once all that is done you can now get on with installing your fresh copy of avast and reboot when it's done and you should be all set to go.
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Here is the AVG Uninstaller Tool: http://www.avg.com/us-en/download-tools (http://www.avg.com/us-en/download-tools). Reboot after uninstalling.
Follow craigb's instructions and let us know if all is fixed. Thanks.
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The official Avast instructions for:
3rd party: Uninstalling third-party antivirus software (Removing your Current AV)
https://support.avast.com/index.php?languageid=1&group=eng&_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=574 (https://support.avast.com/index.php?languageid=1&group=eng&_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=574)
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Thank you so much for your responses! At first I got stuck trying to uninstall avast: I could get control panel to show up, but the list of programs didn't get populated - I think my computer would freeze before it got that far. But then I tried uninstalling from safe mode using SafeMSI.exe, and that seems to have done the trick. I've been able too do everything else you suggested since, and am now running malwarebytes, then I'll reinstall avast, and fingers crossed...
Again, thank you so much for your help.