ashMaiSv block attempt

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Avast Home has been running now for 3 yrs and doing an excellent job (98SE).
For the past 3 days I’m getting a warning from Arovax saying “Security Alert - A program has been deleted from the windows boot-up list. Please ‘Approve’ or ‘Deny’ this change.” then showing ashMaiSv.
Obviously I block this action. I’ve done checking with Spybot and Ad-Aware but I’m clean. I’ve done a ‘Repair’ of Avast.
I have noticed that these enrties no longer in my Registry, do not know if they should be there and if they have impact on my problem?

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\OptionalComponents]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\OptionalComponents\IMAIL]
“Installed”=“1”
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\OptionalComponents\MAPI]
“NoChange”=“1”
“Installed”=“1”
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\OptionalComponents\MSFS]
“Installed”=“1”

Is there anything else I can do?
Any suggestions or thoughts most welcome.

2

Don’t block the ashMaiSv.exe it is the avast email scanner, without it you won’t be able to scan your email, assuming you had the Internet Mail provider enabled. I don’t understand why this Arovax error is being displayed.

What has deleted the ashMaiSv.exe from the windows boot-up list, is this telling you arovax has deleted it or notifying you something else has deleted it ?

My personal confidence in arovax isn’t high you can judge for yourself by doing a forums search for it as it has been discussed a number of times.

I suggest that you see if you can reverse your Deny decision in arovax (restore) which to my mind a good security program would have.

3

Thanks DavidR for yr input. No I did not block ashMaiSv.exe, I blocked (denied) the change. Arovax is just warning me that a third party is requesting it and giving me the options. Avast is still scanning as usual and I cannot survive without it.

I’m just wondering why this request happened and my thoughts were that it is some or other malware.
I hoped that something similar may have occurred with other users of Avast.

4

Try a repair of avast. Add Remove programs, select ‘avast! Anti-Virus,’ click the Change/Remove button and scroll down to Repair, click next and follow. You need to be on-line to do this.
If that doesn’t work try, uninstall, reboot, install, reboot.
It would probably be best to download the latest version of avast and save it to your HDD, somewhere you can find it again. Use that when you reinstall.

You would obviously have to watch out for any arovax messages after a repair of reinstall of avast and take care on any answers you give.

5

Thanks DavidR, have done as you suggested. The repair option had no effect. I then eventually uninstalled and reinstalled again. So far so good. I’m still wondering what caused this attempt to hijack Avast e-mail scanning but happy that it is no longer active.
I can’t imagine Avast just breaking like magic after 3 years.
Luckily arovax is keeping an eye on that reg area because no other prog noticed it.

6

There are times when things happen on computers and you never find out why they happened, just to many potential interactions. Thankfully the reinstall appears to have resolved the problem.

7

Did Arovax not tell who/what this third party was?

8

Hi CharleyO, pity no, in this instance I only received a pop-up from Arovax saying:
“A program has been deleted from the windows boot-up list. Please ‘Approve’ or ‘Deny’ this change” indicating very precisely the path to ashmaisv.exe and gave me the option to Permit or Block.

9

If I’m not wrong, a recently update of Outlook Express could be the one which is trying to ‘bring back’ old settings and configurations.
Anyway, this happen with XP, I’m not sure if the OE of Windows 98 had the updates too…

Arovax has a forum too… maybe there then can help more.