I've purchased AIS for 3 computers, and have it installed on my laptop.
On the machine in my signature, I know that I must remove the Online Armor firewall. I did a search on
http://support.emsisoft.com/forum/53-online-armor/ and found a thread stating to remove it using Add/Remove Programs while in Windows Safe Mode and that it should remove it cleanly. With any luck, that is true. I have found no link for a dedicated removal tool directly from Emisoft.
Avast Free has some settings that I would like to have survive the upgrade to AIS.
1. Will entering the license file in the existing install result in Avast Free upgrading itself to AIS?
2. Will an overinstall of AIS over the Avast Free install work correctly, and will the settings be preserved?
3. If I clean uninstall Avast Free and install AIS, can the saved settings be imported back into AIS?
If it weren't for my desire to retain the settings, I'd simply do a clean uninstall and then install AIS. I do have AIS installer and aswclear.exe downloaded. SpyBot Search & Destroy active components have been deactivated and do no load into memory at all, so it cannot cause any problems.