Avoid Non-Microsoft Antivirus Software

Re:Avoid Non-Microsoft Antivirus Software by TeMPOraL on Thursday January 26, 2017 @04:51AM (#13490041)

> I should say here that I fully expect someone reading this has managed to uninstall an AVG toolbar with no issues. They have multiple different auxiliary tools to their antivirus, and I'm not sure specifically which one(s) caused me trouble personally.

I can say this: I never had a problem with uninstalling a browser toolbar, or restoring the default search engine in the browser. What I always have problems with, is getting rid of AV software itself. Oh God, how hard it is sometimes.

Norton AV taking half an hour to uninstall is a known thing; I'm convinced they actually have some Sleep() calls in their code just to piss people off. But just last week I tried to get rid of Comodo AV (+ 2 bullshit pieces of software it installed) on my neighbour's computer. Took a while. The uninstaller didn't work (it reported "an error" and gave up), so ultimately I had to resort to manually deleting stuff until the uninstaller finally unlocked itself and cleaned up the rest.

I've been having similar experiences with all AV software in past few years. They're a menace.

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Re:Avoid Non-Microsoft Antivirus Software by tempestn on Thursday January 26, 2017 @05:31AM (#13490226)

Ya, IIRC it wasn't specifically the AVG toolbar, but some other thing in integrated into the browser. It refused to uninstall, and then even when I downloaded and ran the super-secret installer from their site, it replaced itself on the next restart. Extremely frustrating.

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