When you install latest Avira Antivirus –online or offline– along with it, Avira Launcher or Online Essentials will also be installed on your computer, and is hard to remove. This happens to both free and Paid versions. German security company, Avira claims its launcher allows users to install one or more Avira products such as browser safety, but the company also uses launcher as a tool to promote its other products such as Avira Scout browser, System Speedup, Phantom VPN, SafeSearch Plus.
For a single user, Avira launcher is useless. After installing Avira, if you thought the launcher was of no use, and if you attempt to uninstall it, you’ll receive this warning or error: ‘Avira Launcher cannot be uninstalled, because it is required by following applications: -Free Antivirus‘, even though that is not true, functioning of Avira antivirus has nothing to do with the Launcher product.
Disable Avira Launcher
You can remove it by using the third-party uninstaller like IObit, but it gets reinstalled itself automatically by performing an update to the product as we noticed, so it’s better for you to disable it, after that, you won’t notice its icon in the tray or it won’t load automatically on Windows startup, but you’ll see Avira antivirus icon in notification area.
1. Open Run dialog box, type msconfig and press enter
2. Click on ‘Startup’ tab (you need to visit Task Manager and Startup tab to manage startup programs on Windows 10)
3. Select Avira Launcher and click ‘disable‘ button, done.
Thanks dude. I can’t believe i didn’t check there first…
You can use a program called “Revo Uninstaller” and uninstall all Avira parts. After that, you should uninstall Avira Launcher.
If there’s something else, you can use “Auslogics Registry Cleaner” and delete all the registry entries which are related to Avira.
If you’ve used revo and done that then its fine, but not wise to give advice without testing. Its not good practice the remove registry entries without uninstalling the launcher, when you try to remove Avira Launcher using Revo, first built-in uninstaller will be run, don’t you know that? That will trigger dialog shown in the article. We’ve written the post after trying with Revo.
at least up until the 08/08/2016 you can still uninstall the unwanted
Avira Launcher.
look for its uninstaller, the one that would tell you uninst. isn’t possible,
and run it with the parameters “/uninstall /quiet” …. et voilá…
it WILL uninstall.
Best Bytes,
Harry
You can uninstall it, but every time Avira updates its definitions, it reinstalls the launcher.
Honestly I don’t know why Avira did this starting mid this year, its pointless to have the Launcher if you’re just running the free Antivirus and the launcher actually sometimes causes the Antivirus not to load.
The best is to use the method in the article, or some utility like CCleaner to delete to Launch startup entry outright.
You can uninstall it without it coming back. What is preventing it from unistalling is the Avira launcher/antivirus process that is running in the background. Go to task manager and end the processes (one or both if they are listed there); then use which ever uninstaller you like and presto! It’s gone forever! Clean your registry afterwards for good measure.
Avira will update itself and installs the launcher again. This article has been written after trying all the options to get rid of Launcher.
Thanks for the info. I dumped Avira and went back to AVG for this very reason.
What a nightmare trying to get rid of all the Avira bits and pieces! It has taken me hours. The only thing I have left now is the file Avira.Systray.exe. It’s there, hidden in my notification area but I haven’t got the energy to try to find it’s location to delete it. It’s nowhere obvious. Never again!
What are you trying to achieve? Uninstalling Avira will do that also.
hi!
i’ve win 10 home vers 1607 latest build update..since days i’m not able to have the avira free icon in my systray..
and there is no way to start the service avira host cause it stops in a while…is there a trick to re have my avira in systray..??
if i kill in task expolorer.exe it appears but at the reboot it disappear again..
You may need to uninstall and reinstall Avira for its icon to show in the system tray.
This shit is outrageous and I will never use another product from AVIRA ever if I can get it off of my machine
This is ridiculous. I was looking for a good Anti Virus and I got something that rather behaves as a virus itself.
If I have to format this machine I will be done with this product.
Avira, okay i uninstalled this shit Anti- Virus, and guess what it still apparently scans. So i’m thinking Avira has a “Built-in” virus, and why is this? Because i can’t find it’s file, and so i’m thinking of going into Avira- Connect (Still installed i can’t remove it), and finding it’s file named “Avira.ServiceHost.exe” while deleting the code inside it.
I doubt it’ll work though.
Whomever put this application to the “Top 10 Anti- Virus” list is a complete idiot, for this Anti- Virus is the worst.
I can’t believe it still exists, not only that i have “MalwareBytes” an Anti- Virus that literally is an Anti- Virus/ Anti- Malware. Next PC i get, and if Avira is installed on it, i’m going to file a complaint to the company, i’ll also state that Avira sees fake viruses, while actual Anti- Viruses see actual viruses.
I even tried disabling this peace-of-shit Anti- Virus, hell i might as well call it a Virus itself, because every time it scans, it uses more then enough CPU, and Hard-drive power.
Run AVira registry cleaner tool- official one from Avira. https://techdows.com/2014/01/avira-registrycleaner.html
does it make sense to use an Avira registry cleaner tool to remove Avira (System Speedup in my case) from my computer? please advise
No I don’t think so.
An IT professional has my laptop trying to remove the Avis Connect virus. I used Revo-Uninstaller three times and it appears to remove Avira. Within minutes the avira-connect icon is back on my system tray. When this happens there are usually multiple Avira related processes running on Task Manager. Task Manager cannot end those processes. I’ve disabled Avira Connect using MSCONFIG. It reenables itself.
I would appreciate any suggestions how to get Avira Connect off my computer which, BTW, is running Windows 7 Pro. Thanks.
i don’t understand why have two different applications to manage the antivirus its freaking stupid.
Avira-Connect is a piece of , when i log in is this crap it keeps connecting to several amazon cloud ips instead of domains names for easy proxy compatibility and safety .
I don’t have this problem with Bitdefender i can manage all my clients with the console using proxy.
I have a Window 7. I do not know if this will WORK for to other Windows.
Under msconfig go to service tab. Look for Avira Virtual Disk Driver Helper by the manufacturer Olaf Lagerkvisit. Uncheck this one, IT IS NOT PART OF THE Avira manufacturer. Under manufacturer Avira uncheck the following: Avira Service Host, Avira Optimizer Host, and Avira Updater Service.
Now under startup tab uncheck ONLY Avira. You can leave along Avira Speedup System in startup.
to remove avira, just follow the instructions on there support page, https://www.avira.com/en/support-for-home-knowledgebase-detail/kbid/902
it will remove it in less then 5 minutes.