UKC

Does anyone have any experience with Avast Business Cloudcare who could advise on how to get rid of it from a non-business PC on which it is not required?

Here's the problem:

I'm in the process of cleaning up a Windows 10 PC that belonged to an elderly relative who has now had to go into long-term care.  I've run into a bit of a brick wall with Avast Business Cloudcare.  No-one seems to know how it got on to the machine - and why would a little old lady need a business app on her PC anyway?  As far as we can see it's pointless and annoying (one tedious trick it has is re-installing Avast Antivirus every time you reboot the machine, which then displaces Windows Security without asking) but it's turning out to be a right b*gg*r to get rid of.

I've tried uninstalling it in the usual way but the uninstaller asks me for my "administrative password".  I find this puzzling as I'm already logged on to the machine as a local administrator.  If I re-enter the admin user's password then the uninstaller rejects it.  My current assumption is that the administrator in question will be somewhere 'in the cloud' - but we can find no clue as to where the app is being administered from, or who by.

I have disabled all Avast-related services that I can see in Computer Management.  Ideally, though, I'd like to deep-six the whole blasted thing. 

Any ideas?  I suspect this might end up being a bit fiddly...

I would consider plan b reinstall windows from scratch.

I think I'm going to go at it by hand with some rather blunt instruments: delete all Avast folders in Program Files and elsewhere, and anything in the registry that looks Avast-related (after taking a backup).

I've found the offending program that insisted on re-installing Avast Antivirus in the Windows startups and zapped that.

Still beats me why it was ever on the machine in the first place, though.

Was your relative in the clutches of a local PC support outfit? Might it have been installed as part of a over-the-top annual support contract?

I was thinking that something of the sort might have happened.  We have checked all her bank accounts, PayPal etc and not found any regular payments going out, or scheduled, so if it was that then it looks like it will have been a one-off up-front payment for a fixed period.

We shall just have to be vigilant about the possibility of follow-up payments being requested when we're managing her accounts for her (we have PoA).

Still wish I could get rid of the unwanted software a bit more easily, though.

I'm with mondite: secure the data, reinstall windows and the apps, and re-copy the data back on as appropriate. 

Playing whack-a-mole with the program files and registry can work but can also get really tedious (especially if there's some part of the setup that goes by another name than Avast)

This. My patience for this sort of thing has got very low, so I'll generally give it about half an hour of effort and then wipe and reinstall. I'll even wipe perfectly good machines running old versions of Windows 10 because a clean install is far quicker than updating to the current version.