Thanks for your response Avast-Team. Since I got no useful response from anyone in the Forum, I took the computer to a data recovery specialist company who charged me $55 to come to the conclusion that the only way was to wipe the Hard Drive and start everything afresh and reinstalling Windows and the saved data from the disk, at considerable cost. I don't know if they used any Live USB or LiveCD programs, but they said there was no other way of getting inside the Hard drive, other than reformatting and reinstalling Windows after recovering whatever data they could.
So, what to do?.... Try and do a retro fix using a 1.44 MB Floppy drive and a Windows ME start up disk. Most CD-ROM drives can be made to work in DOS. I chose the Floppy route as the CD/DVD drive was disabled and would not accept any boot up disk or the windows set up disk that came with the computer.
Link : Making your CD-ROM drive available from DOS
lateblt.tripod.com/proc1.htm
There are four (4) of them, and their file names are ASPICD.SYS, OAKCDROM.SYS, BTCDROM.SYS, and FLASHPT.SYS. Most CD-ROM drives from the DOS era can be made to work in DOS with one of these drivers. Once you've gotten your CD-ROM drive working in DOS, you may find that the device driver plus MSCDEX
This was done on a MSI G31M3V2 motherboard which had provision for a 1.44 MB FDD, but no floppy. Luckily I kept my start up disk from my Win ME days. Also I had my old Win ME computer with a Floppy drive in it.
First I removed all the external connections, power, internet etc to the Win XP computer. Removed the CMOS battery from the MSI motherboard and pressed the start button in the front to reboot the bios to default settings and to remove any latent static electricity from the motherboard.
I installed the Floppy drive with the cable that came with the floppy and used a 4 pin power cable from the Win XP to the Floppy drive. Replaced the CMOS Battery, connected the power cable to the back of the computer, the mouse, keyboard and monitor.
Started the computer and the floppy started whirring and the CD/DVD drive came alive. I put my Win XP installation disk in the CD drive and the recovery console came up. From here it was a matter of following the the recovery options. If I made a mistake and the computer turned off, I would restart the computer, go back to the recovery console software and try something else. This website helped in this part of the recovery process.
https
/forums.techguy.org/threads/stuck-in-boot-screen-after-changing-options-at-msconfig.879227/
After five days of reading articles on the internet and trying this and trying that, the only thing that worked to crack the disabled drives that were throttled by the security software were by using the retro DOS recovery disc.
Now I am back to square one, where I still have the Avast Premier trial and Avastclear free programs which will not uninstall no matter what I try.
from the Avast-Team:"geekilku -- you should be able to remove Avast with no issues via the Add/Remove programs option in your Control Panel. You would only use the Avast Clear uninstall utility if, for some reason, it cannot be uninstalled via the normal methods."
Using this method came up with "You do not have sufficient access to uninstall a program. Please contact your system administrator" Could not get past this unless I went into the registry. Did not want to go there.
When I tried using the AvastClear.exe, uninstall utility, it first showed a box recomending to restart the computer in "Safe Mode" or to proceed without going to Safe Mode. I clicked without safe mode, as starting in 'Safe Mode' caused the whole problem in the first place by disabling all the drives in the computer at the start of this whole mess. The uninstall exe file then proceeded with uninstalling the Avast files until it got to a point where it showed a screen with - Warning ! "Incompatible antivirus detected: Malwarebytes. We strongly recommend uninstalling it so your computer's performance is not affected." and the only options were to click on a [Restart Computer] button OR [Restart Later] button.
Clicking on [Restart Computer] button, restarts the computer and leaves the Avast program still intact. Pressing [Restart Later] button takes you back to where you were previously, again with Avast intact. There is no other option available.. I did this a few times in case I missed something and looked for any other options to remove Avast, but ended up where I was Five days ago, trying to uninstall Avast.
Before I start downloading and trying uninstall programs, appreciate any suggestions. Avast are you there?
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