App Review Best way to Uninstall Antivirus from Windows

[Venustus]

Video by Britec09:

 

[FrFc1908]

he forgot to mention some things : best to check with autoruns also , the reason why is that there maybe some leftover drivers running after the removal process ( zemana , comodo and many others have this problem ) also I like to check the registry mannualy via the regedit command promt. sometimes obsolete keys are still present after the removal process.

 

[Ink]

1. Uninstall via Control Panel > Programs and Features
2. Reboot
3. Run official Uninstall tool provided by vendors' Support pages, may require Safe mode
4. Reboot
5. Run CCleaner/Registry cleaner
6. Run Search Everything for leftover Files/Folders, by searching for specific related terms
7. Take Caution on when modifying the Windows Registry (regedit)

For smart users, restore system image prior to Antivirus installation.

 

[Venustus]

This is also very handy to clean any hidden remnants!!

 

[tim one]

This is also very handy to clean any hidden remnants!!

I agree, I also use Everything, very powerful and fast way to find lefovers.

 

[RejZoR]

I usually uninstall stuff the usual way and then do the file/folder and registry search by hand.

For example, if I uninstall avast!, I then search for "avast" on C: drive and delete everything it finds and can be deleted. Then I use Auslogics Registry Cleaner and use the manual mode. Search for "avast" again and delete it all. Basically same goes for other companies. Only ones that don't wok like this are names like "AVG" because the name is too short and gets included in bunch of files and registry entries because it's just too short so I don't do that for these. The rest like Kaspersky, Comodo, Bitdefender, Norton, AVIRA etc works perfectly fine.

 

[tim one]

Paranoid steps

1) Save a current image of the OS just with WD and your complete applications and data (by using Macrium for example).

2) Install antivirus you want to use.

3) At the expiration of the license, or when you want to change antivirus, you can restore the previous clean image.

4) Install a new antivirus and so on.

Absolutely no antivirus leftovers and on my system the restore of an image requires just 10 minutes.

 

[HarborFront]

Paranoid steps

1) Save a current image of the OS just with WD and your complete applications and data (by using Macrium for example).

2) Install antivirus you want to use.

3) At the expiration of the license, or when you want to change antivirus, you can restore the previous clean image.

4) Install a new antivirus and so on.

Absolutely no antivirus leftovers and on my system the restore of an image requires just 10 minutes.

Hi

Does Macrium (free) creates a bootable USB stick for backing up? What size of USB stick would you recommend for a Windows 10 OS backup?

Thanks

 

[tim one]

Hi

Does Macrium (free) creates a bootable USB stick for backing up? What size of USB stick would you recommend for a Windows 10 OS backup?

Thanks

Here to create a bootable USB to restore your system but you can save your backups on second partition or external HDD because Win10 image is about 20 GB in my case.

How to create USB rescue media

 

[Zero Knowledge]

You can try Geek Uninstaller and use Force Removal mode. Get's rid of basically everything that is installed.

 

[Evjl's Rain]

if we use kaspersky removal tool, we're screwed
since I and many users got this problem that broke system restore/system protection completely, I have been against those removal tools

 

[jamescv7]

Honestly there are so many steps and none of them are wrong.

You need a couple of tools to ensure that no leftovers exist in a system.

Yes creating a stable snapshot image to revert any changes is a wise move, a loophole that will never ever fix.