Avast!5 + Online Armor free + uTorrent

When I tried to open uTorrent the first time after installing Online Armor free, the system went into a holding pattern and uTorrent would not open. After I finally got the machine to shut down (after about 10 minutes of looking at the hourglass), I rebooted, disabled Avast!, and uTorrent opened perfectly and the appropriate rules were created for it automatically since it is trusted by OA. Now that the rules are present, I can open it with Avast! active. This is the second time Avast has caused or contributed to a lockup when used in conjunction with another vendor’s firewall product. The other time was with World of Warcraft and PC Tools. I don’t think it’s fully compatible with some HIPS systems.

You could put it another way, this is the second time that OA has contributed to a lockup as it takes two to tango.

I suggest that you update your signature as it doesn’t reflect that you have OA as your firewall, I would suggest you also put the full version number of avast, etc.

According to your signature you also have MSE installed and that too can be one of the dance partners in this tango if you have its resident protection running.

No- My signature says that Avast! is installed on the XP machine and MSE on the Vista one. I thought that was clear enough. The version number of Avast! is the latest one since it updated a couple of days ago.

I also said that lockups have occurred with two different Firewalls in combination with Avast!. Granted it’s with different applications but still it indicates some kind of a problem with coexisting with HIPS based Firewalls. There is no problem that I know of with Comodo’s Firewall and Avast! however.

I’m also not changing the signature until I decide if I want to keep OA or not. I’m currently running only the firewall module with the HIPS disabled. It gives me a relatively silent 2 way Firewall that only prompts to allow connections one time. I want no part of either HIPS or sandboxing at this time. I think Avast! 5 with a true 2 way Firewall is all I need. I also have MBAM free as a backup cleaner if anything gets past Avast! so I feel pretty good about the setup.