Running multiple antivirus programs on the same computer can cause conflicts resulting in false positives, a slowdown in performance, or system instability.

Question of the week: Can I have more than one antivirus program on my computer at a time?

This is a good question to ask the week that security geeks are discussing the death of antivirus all over the media. The antivirus program of the 90s may be among the dearly departed, but modern anti-malware solutions such as avast! security products incorporate firewalls, intrusion detection, heuristics, virtualization, sandboxes, and many other layers of protection, making it an extremely sophisticated piece of software.

With all that complicated software, it’s not a good idea to run two antivirus programs simultaneously. In fact, many antivirus programs will not install if another antivirus is detected on your system.  Generally speaking, it’s good to have an antivirus program that scans every file or download for malware and a firewall which controls what comes into your computer so you can keep out hackers, viruses, and worms. Running multiple antivirus programs on the same computer can cause conflicts resulting in false positives, a slowdown in performance, or system instability.

Therefore it is strongly recommended to uninstall all other previously installed antivirus applications before installing avast! on your computer. Most antivirus companies produce a special uninstaller program to remove their antivirus software. You should use these removal tools because typical uninstallation from the Control Panel in Windows can leave stray files behind in some cases. These files may still remain in the system and prevent avast! Antivirus from being correctly installed.

How do I uninstall my old antivirus program?

We have compiled a list of vendors that provide a special removal tool to uninstall their antivirus software on the AVAST FAQ page. Follow their instructions before proceeding with the uninstallation.

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