How To Disable Avast Antivirus Temporarily (3 Easy Steps)

Avast Corporation is a  Cybersecurity company based in Czech. It is known for developing Machine Learning Software, Security products such as Anti Viruses, Fire Walls, etc. Avast has 435 million customers all around the world and is also the pioneer in the Anti-malware software market. Most of you might have heard about AVG software. This was also acquired by Avast in July 2016.

How To Disable Avast Antivirus

The most successful product developed by Avast. This is the topmost rated anti-virus in the market. Due to a huge research team of Avast, they release daily updates for their antivirus. This has led to being the pioneer of anti-malware software. A second reason, the software has a free version too. People often like free software and hence this made Avast the number one. 

There’s a premium version also. It provides all the facilities or turns on access to all shields. It provides Firewall, Network Scanner, Lockbox, Sandbox, and lots of other features. The software is a bit pricey but it’s worth the features. 

Check out the software Avast

Before “How to disable Avast”, Why do you want to Disable Avast?

There are times when you need to uninstall the Anti-virus due to some reason.

Few reasons are-:

1. Incompatibility with other software. This causes an imbalance in the system of the user. 

2. Makes the computer slow. Anti-Virus software sometimes uses up a lot of resources and this makes the computer Laggy and slow.

3. Prevents execution or running of some applications or software. At the time, the software restricts running software which is really required to run, such as a Windows OS Activator. There is no way to overcome this.

4. Stopping games to run. They prevent some games to run properly, such as the pirated ones.

5. Stopping essential services to run properly. Such as Bluetooth driver software or WiFi driver software.

6. There have been some speculations that Anti-Virus companies create malware and then release software to fix it. They do it to polish their business. However, no one knows the truth.

Now let’s see the process of how to disable the anti-virus software.

How To Disable Avast Anti-Virus Temporarily

Avast provides a lot of options to turn off the software. They call it shields. The free version has only one shield that is the Anti-Virus shield. This will scan your devices and your files in Realtime. You can disable this shield either for 10 minutes, an hour, a day, or permanently. Follow the steps.

Step 1: Locate the Avast icon in the taskbar of your Windows system.

Step 2: Right-click on it and find “Avast Shields Control”. Choose from the option.

• Disable for 10 minutes
• Disable for an hour
• Disable Permanently

Step 3: Confirm your selection then click on “Yes”. The Avast anti-virus and all other active shields will now be disabled according to and as long as your choice says.

Observe: The icon of Avast should now have a small warning symbol. Check whether the software got deactivated completely or not. Open the main app, it should greet you with a big RED shield. 

This means all your shields are now deactivated.

To re-enable the shields, simply click on Resolve now. This will re-enable all your shields.

How To Disable Avast Specific Shields?

Avast provides another option to disable selected shields. Using it, you can disable specific shields such as firewall,

or only Anti-Virus or Network Scanner, or Trojan Scanner. 

This will be helpful when you want to run some app for a specific period of time. Or you simply want to open some restricted website. Follow the steps:

1. Open the main app, now go into “Protection”. Look for “Core Shields”. For OLDER VERSIONS, click on Settings, then go to “Components” or “Active Protection“. Find the list of all the shields, now turn off the shields you want to. You will have the same options as mentioned above.
2. When the selected shields were successfully disabled you will get a notification pop-up for that. This will say, that a particular shield has been deactivated. Click on the notification to re-enable the shield.

You may also Like: Avast Rootkit scanner 

Controversial Avast Software Story :

On one side, Avast is the number one anti-malware software. On the other, it has been reported by researchers that Avast itself makes viruses and then sells fixes for it. These are speculations, we don’t guarantee the info is true or not.

Second, Motherboard, a Canadian magazine, reported that Avast tracks every click of yours on your PC. It then sells this data to advertisers. This means they act like keyloggers. The Anit-virus software which was supposed to protect you is now itself selling your data. Quite Paradoxical. They do this to enhance their business.

Data is sold to companies such as Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants. 

On a personal note 😥  , I would recommend stay away from Anti-Virus software and follow safe practices to keep yourself safe online. Like not downloading pirated or “free” stuff. 

SWITCH TO LINUX! 🙂 

Conclusion

So these were some simple steps, using which you can disable your Anti-Virus. The steps are quite simple and the process to deactivate the software is quite simple and easy to follow.

The steps are the same for all Avast products, such as Avast Anti-Virus Pro, Avast Ultimate, Avast Internet Security or Avast Premier.

I hope that this guide helped you in solving your problems. Do not forget to turn back on your shields, protection is very necessary for your Windows environment. If you don’t want the hassle of Anti-Virus software, switch to Linux. Open-source and very few viruses have been created for this OS. However, it depends on your requirements.

I hope this helped, clear your issues. Share this article with your friends and comment down if you have any questions. See you in our next article.

Cheers! 🙂