In this test, we assess how easily and completely a user can uninstall antivirus programs. In such cases, clean uninstallation is mission critical. For example, some antivirus programs check for the presence of competing antivirus products and refuse to install if any trace of one is found. You might also encounter a more serious problem. Additionally, there is the possibility that the “uninstalled” antivirus might waste significant disk space – up to hundreds of megabytes – by leaving numerous files behind. if Windows tries to start a program that is no longer installed.

You might find that you get irritating error messages, e.g. Furthermore, an incomplete uninstallation can potentially cause problems ranging from minor to major. So, regardless of which security product you intend to use afterwards, it is important to be able to remove as much as possible of the current antivirus first.Īs antivirus programs are deeply integrated into the Windows OS, uninstalling them cleanly can be quite a challenge. Moreover, a standard practice if a program is malfunctioning is to uninstall and reinstall it. Clearly, if you install a security program and then later decide that it is not for you, you want to be able to uninstall it easily and cleanly. Also, AV-Comparatives recommends users to try out antivirus programs using a free trial version, to check if they are suitable. You might want to change to a different product when your current subscription expires. This test, which was commissioned by PC Magazin (Germany), looks at a rarely considered but nonetheless important aspect of computer programs: how easy is it to completely remove them from your computer? Whilst we do not encourage users to uninstall third-party antivirus programs, this could be necessary in a number of scenarios.

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