Competitor Antivirus Removal Tool - CART

If the Client is using a central management console (such as VIPRE Antivirus Business) then please ensure that it does not attempt to reinstall the existing Antivirus product when it detects it has been uninstalled.

Running Antivirus solutions side-by-side on the same computer can be catastrophic. The programs will not only severely affect performance, but can also cause conflicts. Examples include, one program continually scans the other, both programs attempt to neutralize the same threat or one product may detect the other as a threat and try to remove it.

To avoid this scenario, Managed Antivirus will not install where it detects another antivirus product on the computer. Any incompatible products present on Managed Antivirus enabled computers appear in the device's Summary tab.

To install Managed Antivirus, first remove any incompatible products and reboot the computer to remove any remnants of the product held in memory. For example, Active Protection.

Manual Removal via the Summary tab

You can instruct Managed Antivirus enabled devices to remove existing supported products via the Summary tab for the device on the All Devices view. This removes the existing solution and replaces it with Managed Antivirus.

  1. On the All Devices view North-pane, select the device
  2. Go to its Summary tab
  3. Locate Managed Antivirus - Not Compatible – PRODUCT NAME detected entry
  4. Click the Force Installation link (where supported)

If the existing product is unsupported, you will need to manually remove the existing product by running that products uninstaller and reboot for each device.

Automatic Removal of existing (supported) Antivirus products

As manual removals can be a time-consuming process, particularly when dealing with a large fleet of servers or workstations. You can automatically remove any (supported) incompatible Antivirus solutions through the Competitor Antivirus Removal Tool (CART) in the Protection Policy.

Choose whether to automatically remove any conflicting Antivirus products and select the reboot behavior in the Installation Settings of the Managed Antivirus  Protection Policy by enabling or disabling the options to:

  • Automatically remove conflicting antivirus products
  • Automatically reboot device when required

Please see: Bitdefender Engine - Protection Policies for further details configuring a Protection Policy.

Where the Automatically reboot device when required option is selected, a System Shutdown message is displayed on the remote machine to inform the end-user of the upcoming restart.

The Summary tab on the All Devices view displays the current state of the removal process, for example Removal Pending through to Active.

In addition to removing the competitor antivirus product, CART automatically removes any associated Antivirus Update Checks or Windows Service Checks for the uninstalled antivirus solution.

Only supported Antivirus products are detected and any unsupported solutions will require manual removal via that product’s uninstaller.

Information on the products supported for removal is listed in Bitdefender Engine - Supported Products for Removal.

Please be aware that where a competitor's Antivirus product is installed on a machine but not supported by any of the detection mechanism so undiscovered Managed Antivirus will be installed alongside it on the device.

Reboots

Once the existing Antivirus product is successfully removed from the device, the Advanced Monitoring Agent begins the installation of Managed Antivirus. As part of this process it may be necessary to reboot the device again in order to remove any remnants of the product held in memory, such as Active Protection.

The All Devices view indicates when a computer requires a reboot to continue the installation. This appears in the North-pane Rebootreboot_icon column, WallChart and the Summary tab. Where the Automatically reboot device when required option is disabled, a manual reboot will be required.

To initiate a reboot:

  1. On the All Devices view North-pane, select the target device(s). Shift and left-click for a range, Control and left-click for specific computers
  2. Right-click on one of the selections (or from the Servers, Workstations or Devices drop-down)
  3. Choose Reboot > Now or Later. Multiple Devices: confirm the devices and schedule after selecting Later

After sending the reboot command there is a five-minute delay before the computer restarts. To make the end-user aware of the impending restart, the computer displays a System Shutdown notification along with a countdown timer. This message prompts the user to save their work before the computer reboots.

At this point there is no option to cancel the reboot from the All Devices view.

End-user Manually Canceled Reboots

Where the end-user cancels the reboot command, for example enters shutdown.exe /a at the command prompt, the All Devices view displays the device as Reboot pending for thirty minutes after the command was issued.

Whilst in this reboot pending state the Reboot option is unavailable.

After this thirty minute timeout period, the device's status in the Reboot column changes from Pending to Failed. The Reboot option then becomes available for reissue to the devices.

 

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