Avira Antivir Personal Free Version

XP Pro, SP3. Yesterday I was prompted to upload a new free version of Avira Antivir and I did so. Unfortunately it will not perform an update despite having the appropriate setting. As a result, I am now trying to delete it from the Add/Remove feature according to Avira's instructions and am getting the message "Initialisation {sic} of the program modules failed" and will not allow deletion. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Hi, I am a newbie and not very computer literate but I had a similar problem with Avira and it may be helpful for you to read my post and the reply from dbl, and I finally solved my problem and posted about it. Avira gave me these instructions. They wanted me to download another program, but you don't have to do that to get this to work.
Start xp/vista in safe mode. In Windows Explorer open c:\program files\ and delete all Avira antivir directories. It may not let you do that. I run xp prof and it wouldn't let me. Then the instructions say to rename Avira, and then you can delete it after a reboot in safe mode. So I renamed it 'crap' and decided to try to delete without reboot, and it worked!
Then in we open the directory (not even sure what that is)and type in c:\documents and settings\all users\application data for xp and c:\program data\ for vista; and delete the antivir directories there. They say to look in hidden files but I didn't have to do that. (tools-folder options-view-, then select 'show hidden files and folders) . Maybe I just didn't do mine right, omg, I hope I have nothing hidden! They want you to download their registry cleaner, but as I said in my post, I used my own, and it deleted 40 things. If I can be of further help, let me know. Luck with it!
Sheena

 

This program is apparently to remove malware and not the Avira program itself. Thanks for your help, though.

 

Neither would remove the program in normal mode but got it in safe mode with AppRemover. Tried installing other antivirus programs but had trouble with them also. Ended up with PC Tools antivirus to go along with my already in place PC Tools Firewall. Thanks much, Halo. You da man, as usual.

 

Thanks much, got it with Halo's suggestion.