Avast 5.1: Any Way To Turn It Off?

[(PeteCresswell)]

I'm trying to troubleshoot a 5-minute boot time.

Tried disabling all known startups except for Avast with no
apparent effect.

Now I'd like to take Avast out of the picture - just long enough
to re-boot and see if the time gets better.

Anybody know how? I've read the menus about 3 times. It's
probably there and I'm looking right at it...but I don't see it.

Also, FWIW, "Add/Remove Programs" does not seem to offer an
un-install for Avast.

Can anybody straighten me out?

 

[Nil]

Also, FWIW, "Add/Remove Programs" does not seem to offer an
un-install for Avast.

It does for me.

 

[VanguardLH]

I'm trying to troubleshoot a 5-minute boot time.

Tried disabling all known startups except for Avast with no
apparent effect.

Now I'd like to take Avast out of the picture - just long enough
to re-boot and see if the time gets better.

Anybody know how? I've read the menus about 3 times. It's
probably there and I'm looking right at it...but I don't see it.

Also, FWIW, "Add/Remove Programs" does not seem to offer an
un-install for Avast.

Can anybody straighten me out?

Why not do an uninstall of Avast (see below for separate uninstaller)?
Then after the uninstall is complete (which will probably require a
reboot) and Avast is out of your computer, do your test bootup to time
how long it takes. Then when you want to reinstall Avast, install the
latest version which is 7.0. You're back 2 major versions. While the
malware signatures are probably okay, you are missing out on bug fixes,
features, new heuristics, and changes available in the latest release.

If there is no entry in the Add/Remove Programs applet in Control Panel,
either you, a tweaker or utility you ran, or perhaps malware removed it
(but you'd think malware would leave that entry there hoping you might
remove Avast). You could use Avast's own cleanup utility.

http://www.avast.com/en-gb/uninstall-utility

Since this is not an MSI-based installer, it should run in Windows' safe
mode. In fact, Avast says to run this cleanup tool in safe mode; see:

http://support.avast.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=730&nav=0

Boot into Windows safe mode and run the program to see if it works. In
safe mode, Avast won't be active.