a few years ago i used avast on my old pc. i was pretty happy with it, not that i know very much about this stuff. i recently bought a laptop and it has mcafee, which i am not thrilled with. i had forgotten about avast until bubby's recent posts recommending it.
so, i went and downloaded avast. unfortunately, i decided to install it when i was falling asleep, not realizing that it would take a while. i actually fell asleep during the initial scanning process(i think, i mean i was nodding off) and closed my computer. in the morning i performed a scan and avast found some "win32" something or other. it recommended i put it in the "chest", which i did. these were mostly files that i had not installed and weren't important, but there were also some microsoft files. i wasn't comfortable with this, because i didn't really understand what this virus was and what was happening when i put it in the chest.
so, i decided to go online and do research. i clicked on avast online help and connect to the internet, but when the page is loaded and done it is blank. usually when i have connection or server problems, i get some sort of error message. but, i think, o.k. some new issue. i go and check another computer in the household, which connects with no problems. i try again....same blank page. this was the day that, some of you know, i was working on my resume, so i left it alone (less distractions for me, anyway) and did my work.
that evening, i tried to get online again......blank page! now i'm starting to panic a little. i remember reading somewhere that you should not have more than one anti-virus program running at the same time. i figured i would uninstall mcafee (i've heard that you can never get rid of it completely, but what else can i do?), but i don't see any way to uninstall it! i go to the avast chest and try to restore the files i put in the chest, but i'm not sure if anything happened. it made no difference to my problem. i tried to do a system restore (which, unfortunately, i just discovered at this moment) to a previous point that had been auto-saved. nothing changed. i finally decide to uninstall avast, since that was the only thing i had done since i was last able to connect.....i cannot find uninstall!
now i'm completely panicking....i was sure i'd broken my computer and i couldn't even get online for help! i finally realized i could uninstall avast through the add/remove program. and that did the trick, i was back online. what a relief!
o.k. now i want to know if anyone can guess what happened (the only thing i can think of is that i had both avast and mcafee running simultaneously, but i wouldn't expect connection issues with that), and how can i successfully install avast (and uninstall mcafee).
thank you.
it was very scary having a big computer issue and not being able to contact my support system! it made me realize how much i count on you all.
