Any way to change avast pro to free without reinstalling.

[vishwajeet]

i dont have a setup of avast antivirus and i want to evaluate its free version but i have a pro license which have 15 days left.
i want to switch to its free version to check it.
is there any way to switch from pro to free without downloading whole setup and reinstalling again?
 

[DavidR]

Not that I'm aware of, even when the license expires, I don't believe it downgrades to the free version.

Presumably the avastUI, Maintenance, Registration/License section has changed to allow the input of the new license ?
If so I'm wondering, if you could get the avast free off-line registration and have a key emailed and try manually entering that.

See support.avast knowledgebase article 612 Off-line registration.

In all honesty though you really would be best doing a clean install of the free version.

[vishwajeet]

thanx for reply.
i am just getting 2 options.
 i) insert license file
 ii)insert activation code/

and i believe avast free dont need any of these. does it?

[vishwajeet]

ok now.
i deleted the avast registry entry containing path of my license and it shows it has expired.
any way to go free now?

[DavidR]

Follow the suggestions I gave, if you have the option to insert the license file, get the free registration key (info in my link) and try that.

As I said I'm not hopeful that it will work, either it won't allow the free registration key as it is expecting the pro license or it won't downgrade successfully. Either of which will mean a clean reinstall is required and that would probably be best to also run the aswclear.exe (uninstall utility after regular uninstall).

- Download the latest version of avast, 7.0.1426 http://files.avast.com/iavs5x/avast_free_antivirus_setup.exe and save it to your HDD, somewhere you can find it again (if you didn't save your last download). Use that when you reinstall.

- Download the avast! Uninstall Utility, aswClear.exe find it here and save it to your HDD (it has uninstall tools for 5.x, 6.0.x and 7.0.x).

• 1. Now uninstall avast! (using add remove programs, if you can't do that start from the next step), reboot.
• 2. run the avast! Uninstall Utility from safe mode, first for 6.x if previously installed and then for 7.0, once complete reboot into normal mode.
• 3. install the latest version, reboot.

Programs & Features, Uninstall/Change