Uninstall Avast Free Antivirus Completely – How to Remove it Step by Step

Please believe that you are not the only person who has no idea to uninstall  Avast Free Antivirus.  Avast Free Antivirus becomes the most popular downloads on download.cnet.com. The downloading for this program is up to 1,198,779 a week.  However, for any reason there are still many a people who would like to uninstall Avast Free Antivirus form their computer. If you want to replace Avast Free Antivirus with other antivirus programs such as AVG, Norton, NOD32 and McAfee, you need to remove Avast Free Antivirus at first. Because more than two security programs installed on your computer would generate conflicts to make your PC slow and  freeze. Avast Free Antivirus is one of the popular antivirus products in the market today, it is used by a number of PC users and it has been awarded the highest “Advanced+” rating following tests carried out by AV-Comparatives. Of course while your PC will be much safer with this program installed, sometimes you may want to remove Avast for various reasons, such as to conserve system memory in an underpowered machine. In fact, it is not so difficult as you might thought to remove Avast Free Antivirus. Of course, if you want to uninstall other Windows programs, you also can try the instructions as below.

Traditional Method to Uninstall Avast Free Antivirus

Before you remove this program, please make sure it has been closed yet otherwise you will receive error message during the uninstall. To terminate Avast Free Antivirus completely, you need to open the Task Manager and then select the executable files and click “End”.

Avast Free Antivirus doesn’t have its own uninstall utilities. If you want to remove Avast Free Antivirus from your system manually, you have to use the Windows Add/Remove Programs. Please follow the instruction:

1. Click Start menu – Control Panel.
2. Click on Add/Remove.
3. Locate and select Avast! Free Antivirus in the Add/Remove Program list and click Remove button.

4. You will receive a screen of Avast! Free Antivirus asking you to choose an option, Please select “Uninstall”

5. Click “Yes” to ignore the warning message pops-up. And then follow the Uninstall wizard

Note: You should know that the Windows Add/Remove Programs is unable to delete or remove all leftovers of the programs especially the registry entries. What is Windows registry? Registry is a place in your computer which stores information required by the Windows. This information includes everything from expiry date of software as well as your personal theme settings. Windows create different profiles for each user on the same Windows. The types of documents and the installed hardware on the system retrieve data from the registry whenever they are called by the user directly or indirectly. If you always use Windows Add/Remove Programs to uninstall applications, you have to clean up the invalid and damaged registry keys on the system regularly. Because too much invalid or corrupted registry entries would absolutely slow down the whole PC performance and cause system errors on your PC.

You have to delete the registry keys of Avast Free Antivirus. Here is the list:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.avastsounds, Default – avastsoundsfile, Content Type – application/avast-sounds
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\avastsoundsfile, Default – avast! soundpack file, BrowserFlags – 0×00000008 (8), EditFlags – 0×00010000 (65536)
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\avastsoundsfile\shell\open\command, Default – “C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast\aswChLic.exe” “%1″
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AVAST Software
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AVAST Software\Avast, Default – value not set, ListView_1115 – 66 01 00 00 4c 01 00 00 7a 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0…

Here is a list of 5 common registry hives:

1. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT – This hive stores all the information about applications that are installed in your PC.

2. HKEY_CURRENT_USER – This hive stores user-specific settings and configuration data.

3. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE – This hive stores all the settings and configuration data that are general to all PC users.

4. HKEY_USERS – This hive stores individual settings and configuration data for each users of the computer in each sub keys.

5. HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG – This hive temporarily stores the entire boot up information which is only gathered and generated at the system boot time.

Automatically Uninstall Avast Free Antivirus with Max Uninstaller

For a better and easier way to uninstall Avast! Free Antivirus, we recommend you to use Max Uninstaller, in a few clicks you’ll be able to remove Avast! Free Antivirus and all of the leftover completely without taking the risks to delete the registry leftover keys, see the detailed steps below:

Step1: Click here to free download Max Uninstaller, and then install it in your computer.
Step2: Launch Max Uninstaller, select Avast! Free Antivirus the right hand list. Press “Run Analysis”

Step3: Max Uninstaller will review uninstall program files and associated registry entries. Click Complete Uninstall to start the program uninstall process. Click Yes to start uninstalling Avast! Free Antivirus uninstall.

Step4: Wait for the standard Avast! Free Antivirus uninstall completed. Click “Scan Leftovers”, and Max Uninstaller will conduct a full scan on your computer for a while.

Step5: When it finish scanning, click “Delete Leftovers” and “Yes” button to thoroughly remove Avast! Free Antivirus and its leftovers.

Step6: Finally, please delete all leftovers to remove Avast! Free Antivirus completely.

Max Uninstaller can not only uninstall Avast Free Antivirus but also will help you remove other versions of avast.

avast! Online Scanner
avast! Linux Home Edition
avast! Free Antivirus for Mac
avast! Free Antivirus
Avast Pro Antivirus
Avast Mobile Security
avast! Business Protection
avast! EasyPass

All of the avast products can be easily uninstalled with Max Uninstaller. Of course, the products registry folders would be installed in different location of your computer. If you want to remove them manually, you have to find and delete them one by one. It would waste your time so what you need to do is just to download Max Uninstaller then let it help you uninstall the programs. If you still have any questions about this uninstall tool, I highly suggest you contact the Max Uninstaller support team to ask for help. The customer service will guide you how to use Max Uninstaller to remove your unwanted Windows programs.

Any help needed?