Bitdefender Free really hates having other stuff installed on your PC.

Dan50

Level 1
Thread author
Verified
Jul 4, 2017
29
Seems you have to uninstall ALL Comodo products on the system AND SpywareBlaster to get it to install. I was then able to reinstall Comodo and SpywareBlaster after the install of Bitdefender Free.
 

Captain Holly

Level 6
Verified
Well-known
Jan 23, 2021
251
BD Free is also very hard to remove. I used it about a year ago but wound up uninstalling it with the dedicated BD Free removal tool. I tried BD Free again last week just to compare it to AVG Free, BD worked ok but I decided not to keep it and had a lot of trouble removing it. It seems BD no longer publishes a removal tool for BD Free, if it does still exist I could not find it anywhere. Even Revo and HiBit could not completely remove BD Free. I had to restore Windows back to an earlier date just to get Defender started again. Even then I had to manually delete some BD registry keys and also used two of the HiBit cleaners and manually delete the leftover BD folders to finally get rid of it.

C.H.
 

Captain Holly

Level 6
Verified
Well-known
Jan 23, 2021
251
I will say the AVG/Avast Clear removal tool works very well. It ran in safe mode and completely removed AVG off my laptop and left only one junk file that I removed with HiBit. I read a post on here a couple weeks ago a few seasoned MT members recommended HiBit so I tried that too and it is a lot better and has a lot more useful functions than the Revo Free I had used before.

I did not reinstall AVG because even though I had tried to install it to avoid any upsell ads it still was throwing too many bogus warnings about only having a basic firewall, etc. I went back with Avast Free and only installed the core shields and the software updater. Avast has so far been much quieter than AVG.

I had even worse problems earlier this year when I tried Kaspersky Free Cloud. I had to reset and reinstall Windows to get rid of that one.

C.H.
 

oldschool

Level 84
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Mar 29, 2018
7,577
BD Free is also very hard to remove. I used it about a year ago but wound up uninstalling it with the dedicated BD Free removal tool. I tried BD Free again last week just to compare it to AVG Free, BD worked ok but I decided not to keep it and had a lot of trouble removing it. It seems BD no longer publishes a removal tool for BD Free, if it does still exist I could not find it anywhere.
Use the current year paid uninstall tool to remove either paid or free versions after using the built-in uninstaller.
Uninstall Consumer Paid
 

Captain Holly

Level 6
Verified
Well-known
Jan 23, 2021
251
Use the current year paid uninstall tool to remove either paid or free versions after using the built-in uninstaller.
Uninstall Consumer Paid
I tried that too, thinking maybe BD had integrated the Free tool into Paid version but it did not work. It still left a huge folder called Bitdefender Antivirus on my hard drive. After restoring back to the day before I installed BD and running the junk folders and junk files scan and registry scan with HiBit the folder and some of its contents was still there but I was finally able to manually delete what was left from BD.

C.H.
 

oldschool

Level 84
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Top Poster
Well-known
Mar 29, 2018
7,577
No, firewall tweaks are above my pay grade right now, but if I have any of the same trouble from Avast I may give it a try. Right now Avast is behaving very well so I will leave well enough alone for the time being.

C.H.
Believe me, if @oldschool can do it anyone can do it! :LOL: Control panel >System & security > windows firewall > advanced settings > outbound rules > new rule and then follow prompts for "program" > "browse", etc. and add AVGUI.exe
 

Captain Holly

Level 6
Verified
Well-known
Jan 23, 2021
251
Thanks Oldschool, I followed your steps but changed the new rule to block avastgui.exe. Now I have a new rule showing in the firewall, it says Avast is enabled and avastgui.exe is blocked, does this look correct?

Name Group Profile Enabled Action Override Program Local Address

avastgui.exe All Yes Block No avastgui.exe Any

Thanks for the help,

C.H.
 

Captain Holly

Level 6
Verified
Well-known
Jan 23, 2021
251
I see what I think is an error, I had initially set up an outbound rule to block avastgui.exe, I think it should be avastui.exe before it will work. I deleted the avastgui rule and now have this new outbound rule for avastui.exe showing it is blocked:

Name Group Profile Enabled Action Override Program Local Address
avastui.exe All Yes Block No avastui.exe Any

I think I have it correct now.

C.H.
 

Dan50

Level 1
Thread author
Verified
Jul 4, 2017
29
Rats, well that uninstall news isn't good. I did install that HiBit uninstaller to give it a go. I reinstalled all the stuff it asked me to get rid of and no complaining here about that.
 
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SeriousHoax

Level 49
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Mar 16, 2019
3,861
BD Free is also very hard to remove. I used it about a year ago but wound up uninstalling it with the dedicated BD Free removal tool. I tried BD Free again last week just to compare it to AVG Free, BD worked ok but I decided not to keep it and had a lot of trouble removing it. It seems BD no longer publishes a removal tool for BD Free, if it does still exist I could not find it anywhere. Even Revo and HiBit could not completely remove BD Free. I had to restore Windows back to an earlier date just to get Defender started again. Even then I had to manually delete some BD registry keys and also used two of the HiBit cleaners and manually delete the leftover BD folders to finally get rid of it.

C.H.
Did you use any uninstaller like Revo/HiBit when you tried to uninstall it the first time? If yes then that's when the problem occurs. BD free needs to be uninstalled from Windows's Add or remove programs list. Using dedicated uninstaller software can't remove it or even detect the uninstaller. Uninstalling from Add or remove programs never caused any issue for me.
 

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