How to disable Avast antivirus

Avast is one of the most famous third-party antivirus in the world. Since it is free, Avast is present in many computers and is one of the most used and widespread. But many people have problems with it because it does not offer all the security that the habit of not clicking on pages and links of dubious origin would offer, and that many warnings are already given by browsers so many people want to know how disable Avast antivirus.

There is also the famous voice of “The Virus Database has been updated“, which catches many people off guard. That is why we have covered this simple guide to how to disable Avast antivirus temporarily. This can be useful if we want to go to a specific page that Avast considers malicious, or if we want to run our own program that may be incompatible with Avast and therefore consider it a virus. This guide is used to disable antivirus in your version of Windows 10.

Deactivate Avast, step by step

• We open the Avast program. We can do it from the shortcut, from the toolbar or using Windows Explorer.
• We click on the “Menu” section of Avast that we will find in the upper right part of the program as soon as we start it.
• Let's go to the Options section of the menu that we just opened.
• We click on the Protection section.
• We open the Basic Shields section.
• We deactivate the sections that we want to deactivate: File System Shield, which controls and monitors the files on our PCs; Behavior Shield, that watches that our PC is not being used maliciously, Web shield that blocks potentially dangerous downloads and websites; and Email shield which prevents the downloading of email attachments that may be malicious.
• If we want disable Avast shields, we choose the one we want to deactivate.
• We will get a pop-up window asking us how long we want disable Avast shields. Mos will give options of ten minutes, one hour, until the computer is restarted, or indefinitely. In this way we can choose to be left unprotected and at our risk, or simply disable Avast temporarily.

Reactivate Avast antivirus

• We open the Avast program. We can do it from the shortcut, from the toolbar or using Windows Explorer.
• We click on the "Menu" section of Avast that we will find in the upper right part of the program as soon as we start it.
• Let's go to the Options section of the menu that we just opened.
• We click on the Protection section.
• We open the Basic Shields section.
• We reactivate the deactivated shields that we want to work again.

Avast Exceptions

We may just not want disable Avast for security or that we simply do not want to be aware of deactivating and reactivating the antivirus shields. This is why there is the option of Avast exceptions. With this we can tell the antivirus that we do not want it to detect websites, emails or programs as malicious. This is ideal if we are regular users of a website that is considered dangerous, but we know it is not, or if we use a downloaded application that Avast considers a virus.

• We open Avast as we have done on previous occasions.
• Let's go to the Menu.
• We click on the Options part.
• Let's go to the General section.
• We will see the options section. We click on it and then on the Add an Exception button.
• There we add the programs and websites that we trust so that Avast does not skip when we open or browse them.

Reasons to disable Avast

It's easy to think that uninstalling an antivirus like Avast is a big security hole. But in reality, if you are a user who does not save passwords or go to strange sites or download anything strange, you should not have serious problems with viruses. Even if you download movies and series from unofficial websites, watch wrestling on pirated streaming websites and more, if you go to websites and pages with a community that verifies that it is legal, you shouldn't have much of a problem.

Of course, we do not recommend uninstalling antivirus on professional computers, much less connected to a network through a proxy or VPN, because you are leaving a security hole. That is, on your personal computer you can uninstall the antivirus, but you shouldn't do it on a work computer.

The best possible antivirus is the use of human reason

Human beings are one of the biggest sources of viruses, generally if you download as much as possible and don't check what is sent to you. There have been cases like those of the crypto scams on Youtube channels, who take advantage of a minimal security hole in the press and contacts department using extensions that an antivirus does not check. We recommend above all do not blindly trust all the files that are sent to us, even if they appear to be from legal sources.

If you can, check all the files that are sent to you in online testers like Virustotal. Check that the document extensions are not hidden executables. Distrust everything possible. And if necessary for security reasons, install a reliable antivirus.

How to disable antivirus in Windows 11?

Go to the Windows Security section, click “Windows Defender antivirus and threat protection“. The operating system will perform system analysis, after which you can click “Manage settings“, and thus deactivate the option “Real-time protection“. This can leave you exposed to unwanted installations.