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Posted by Wolf K. on February 24, 2008, 3:27 pm
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Roger Hird wrote:
> I've used AVG's free product happily for a couple of years on my WinXP
> desktop.
>
> After Christmas WinXP crashed with a file corruption (and without a decent
> backup) so I had to reinstall it - and all my software.
>
> During this I downloaded the AVG free product - and THOUGHT I had
> installed it. It is certainly in my "program" menu - AVG 7.5 - with icons
> for AVG Control Centre, Test Centre, virus vault and uninstall - but it is
> not clear that it is running. I can't find it on the task bar - or find
> any sign of it in task manager - and if I click on the Control Centre icon
> in the program menu I get the message "Could not initialize AVG Anti-virus
> kernel interface. Application cannot run."
>
> My thought was to uninstall AVG and start again with a new download but
> when I click the "uninstall AVG" icon I get a window with a longish check
> on system status, then an "uninstall failed! - 1 error" window - and the
> error is "Uninstallation not possible. Product not installed".
>
> My query is whether I can just ignore the "phantom" installation, download
> AVG again and install the new copy - or should I try to do something about
> the un-installed AVG in my programs menu. Any ideas out there?
>
I personally do not like installing over top of a defective
installation, but others may disagree. Anyhow, Windows Uninstall never
in my experience has ever done a clean job, and most uninstall applets
included with programs haven't done so either. The reason is that if the
program is referenced by a registry key, some part(s) of it may be
locked, even if they are not running. A locked program module can cause
problems when reinstalling. So the trick is to get rid of all traces of
it. This is what I do, and so far I've had no subsequent problems:
If you installed AVG, there will be as folder for it. Delete everything
in it. There may be some files that won't delete - these ar the ones
mucking up your system. Run a registry cleaner, reboot, delete
whatever's left in the AVG folder, and delete the AVG folder. Run the
registry cleaner again, and reboot. At this stage, there should be no
trace of AVG left, but you could run regedit and Search for 'avg'. Any
keys it finds should be deleted. Reboot, download a fresh copy of AVG,
and install it.
BTW, the registry cleaner will find a lot of invalid keys. Let it clean
them all. I my experience, this has never done any harm -- I run my
registry cleaner about every two weeks.
HTH
--
wolf k.
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