Remove Antivirus Programs with ESET AV Remover

Martin Brinkmann
May 13, 2015
Software
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ESET AV Remover is a free portable program for Windows that has been designed to uninstall antivirus programs on operating systems you run it on.

Most antivirus companies offer removal programs for their products which are mainly designed for situations in which the default removal process is stuck or won't work at all.

This can happen when the installer does not finish installing the program correctly on the system, after a virus attack that manipulated the system or through data corruption.

Regardless of the reason, it is often complicated to remove all traces of the antivirus program from the operating system.

While removal tools help, they usually remove all programs from a company or developer which may not always be in your interest.

ESET's AV Remover has been designed for that purpose as it adds two features to the process that first-party removal tools don't offer: support for different products and companies, and a selection process in which you select the programs that you want removed.

The program supports the removal of antivirus and security solutions from companies such as Avast, Avira, AVG, BitDefender, Kaspersky, Malwarebytes, Norton, Panda, Symantec and Trend Micro to name a few.

The full list of supported programs is available on the ESET website.

eset av remover

The program itself is portable and easy to use. Just run it, accept the end user license agreement and wait for the scan to complete. The scan should not take longer than a minute and results are displayed immediately afterwards.

In particular, any supported program that AV Remover found during the scan is listed on the results page.

eset av remover 2

Each program is listed with its name and version, and a checkbox that you use to select programs that you want removed from the system.

Note: ESET AV Remover supports many programs and versions but it sometimes lacks support for the latest versions of antivirus programs. In addition to that, it may only be able to remove 32-bit or 64-bit versions of installed programs but not both. To find out more about that, consult the full supported programs and versions listing linked above.

The application displays a prompt after you hit the remove button in its interface which acts as a last minute warning that informs you that the selected program(s) will be removed completely from the system.

Once you hit remove again, the uninstallation process starts and all traces of the program are removed from the system. If the actual uninstaller works, it is used first which is similar to how programs like Revo Uninstaller operate.

AV Remover will check for and remove leftovers from the system regardless of whether the native uninstaller completed successfully or not.

If the program was successfully removed, a success message is displayed by the application. Once you click continue on that page, AV Remover suggests to reboot the system to complete the removal process. This can be be skipped however and postponed to a later point in time.

Since it is portable, it may be a good addition to a troubleshooting tools collection. Just make sure you check for updates regularly on the ESET website for compatibility purposes.

Verdict

ESET's AV Remover is a useful tool for Windows users who ran into issues removing antivirus and security products from their system.

While it is generally suggested to use first-party removal tools when available, it may prove useful when those fail to work properly, when you want to uninstall programs from different developers, or when you want to keep select programs from a single company but remove others. (source: Ask VG)

Summary
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2 based on 2 votes
Software Name
ESET AV Remover
Operating System
Windows
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Comments

  1. PhoneyVirus said on May 19, 2015 at 6:52 pm
    Reply

    Defeats the purpose of it even been portable when you have to keep it up to date like Malware database. This removal program reminds me of Norton back in the days when it took a hour to remove their Anti-virus program all while running on a P4 central processing unit. McAfee was the same back in the days and that’s what started to drag there name to the dirt.

    Martin looking at media from View Page Info all reports HTTP and I see no HTTPS Everywhere and I’m from Canada just to let you know were the connect is coming from, more than likely Halifax Nova Scotia and no I’m not from that city just the Packets lol.

  2. Neil said on May 15, 2015 at 1:10 pm
    Reply

    Absolutely! An uninstall tool like “ESET AV Remover” is as basic as a security program for a computer. It can remove the unwanted program thoroughly including registry entries. It is a well known fact that accumulating registry entries are likely to cause registry errors and slow down computers.

  3. dwarf_t0ssr said on May 14, 2015 at 1:37 am
    Reply

    Yeah, this is pretty great for those that run an antivirus, as there are lots that like to embed themselves and require blood sacrifice to remove otherwise. Not that anyone in their right mind should uninstall MalwareBytes, like in the pic (I know you didn’t want to install one of the bad ones for demo purposes, heh). I think even those who dislike antivirus would agree that MalwareBytes free edition scanning is a good idea now and then.

    On a side note, I can see pictures here now. For a long while I only saw picture titles and broken-image symbols, with all things whitelisted.

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on May 14, 2015 at 8:56 am
      Reply

      Do you use HTTPS Everywhere? They had (have?) a rule for Ghacks that was broken.

      1. paulderdash said on May 14, 2015 at 3:06 pm
        Reply

        have … ghacks.net (partial) is broken – disable it …

  4. Tom Hawack said on May 13, 2015 at 3:59 pm
    Reply

    Nice find, Martin, very nice find. I don’t recall one AV having been removed here without complications or at least a hand-full of leftovers (mainly in the Registry, and related unmovable drivers…). This application will come in handy, to put it mildly.

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