Subscriber John Meyer wrote recently to ask for help converting to different antivirus and antispyware software. He had reasonable concerns about uninstalling his AV & AS while still connected to the Internet…
I am a subscriber to your weekly e-mail and am interedted in taking your advise and using Sunbelt’s VIPRE Antivirus & Antispyware. I currently have AVG FREE 8.5 and Ad-Aware Free (Anniversiary Edition) on my computer and I, per some previous experiences, AM CONCERNED ABOUT DELETING THE ABOVE COMPLETELY FROM MY COMPUTER SO AS TO BE ABLE TO CORRECTLY INSTALL THE VIPRE SOFTWARE.What gudiance or help can you provide to assit my in properly deleting what is currently on my computer?
Thanks, John Meyer
I wrote back to John to note that he was using the cable Internet service provider cox.net. Hopefully, he’s using a router, even if he only has one computer.
The router acts as a hardware firewall for you — this really helps since some of the past Windows security problems have been so large that the computer could be successfully attacked without even triggering a software firewall.
With a router, your computer gets a local area network address instead of an address on the Internet. The router gets the Internet address.
Result: replies can get to your computer through the router, but people on the Internet side can not initiate connections to your computer.
Anyway, since I’m behind my router, I don’t think anything about uninstalling antivirus in order to install new antivirus – and that’s a necessary step no matter which AV’s you’re switching between.
If you don’t have a router, just unplug your computer from the cable modem while you do the upgrade.
With VIPRE, you can download the VIPRE software and you can also download the current AV+antispyware definitions file (otherwise VIPRE installs and then gets updates as its first task).
Once you install VIPRE, you can have VIPRE update itself from the new definitions file you downloaded. That way, you can get totally current before you hook up again to the cable modem (or router, if you have a router and want to disconnect).
Steps:
- download VIPRE
- download the current VIPRE definitions file
- disconnect from the cable modem (if you’re on a home network, disconnect your computer from the network)
- uninstall your current antispyware
- uninstall your currrent antivirus
- REBOOT
- install VIPRE
- reboot (it will force this)
- install new VIPRE definitions
— open VIPRE, then File > Settings > Update Tab > in the Update Now section (top of window) click Browse button, and select the definitions file you downloaded - reboot if it forces you to (I don’t think it will)
- connect your computer to your network/router/cable modem
and