Avast forum cha-cha

General Topics
1

When I’ve got a hiccup with any software I usually first surf the applicable forum hoping for a quick solution. Avast forum is blocking me. Crazy statement? I’ve been testing now for the past 45 min, here are the results.
In Favorites I click on my link - http://forum.avast.com/index.php
I select avast! 4.x Home/Pro. Then I open threads to read, sometimes I can read 2 or 3 threads before I’m suddenly locked out. That is, I can go ‘back’ but all the threads & other support forums are now inaccessible, will just not react. I’m allowed to go ‘forward’ to open the last thread but not read another thread. Whatever I do I’m locked in on that single thread only.
I can jump back to Favorites and select another forum, e.g. CastleCops, or any other forum, and surf around without any hassle. Should I then again select Avast forum the link is now dead.
Now I’m worried and started making notes to find which threads inside Avast forum are causing this. Found that thread http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=14570.0 is one of them. Whenever I open that thread I’m stuck.
The only workaround is to close IE and linkup afresh but not for long before I open another thread that locks me out.
I can jump around on ‘Alwil Software Announcements’ as much as I like without any problem (http://forum.avast.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=665c157cb0d366b3a5570565fe9d0060&board=12.0), that is from a fresh IE start.

Next I did a search with Google for ‘avast forum’, opened the forum site and selected avast! 4.x Home/Pro & topic=14570.0. Same problem. I can go back to my search results but all links to Avast forum now dead. I can open any other link to avast.com for updates (which I do not require) etc but the forum dead.

I then cleared all my Advanced rules in Sygate, no change. I can surf any and all other forums except Avast. I can see that while surfing Avast all TCPs - photobucket.com - are allowed. I’m not blocking anything.

Then I logged in/password on Avast forum hoping to have better accessibility, no change, same results.
Avast Home itself is operating 101%, updates, etc.

Sorry for the long story but I would love to know what’s cookin’. Any suggestions?

2

Hi joburg,

Yes there are a few possibilties. It could be a redirect through some malware that prevents you from visiting. Go to https://www.anonymizer.com/ and try to surf the url there.
It could be your hosts file is corrupted, so your computer experience http://forum.avast.com as local. Try to connect to 70.84.157.228 and see what you get there. If this is not working we invite you to send a HJT file or a SmartDreck file, to see what blogs the DNS conversion.

greets,

polonus

3

Thanks polonus for the info. I tested via anonymizer with two Avast url’s and both resulted in ‘Anonymizer Free Private Surfing limits access to the site you requested.’ I then tried the castlecops forum url and that went thru.
I know very little about my hosts file and actually never addressed it for any reason.
I found two files, hosts.sam and lmhosts.sam, both dated 23 apr 1999. In the first file there is only one entry - 127.0.0.1 localhost.
When use 70.84.157.228 I get thru to avast.com and there I can surf around freely except when I select support/forum and then the old story again only one or two threads…
But yr line of thinking sent me in another direction (thanks!) and I started checking all my startup progs, who’s blocking what. I ended up with WebWasher Classic V3.4. By closing it I’m able to surf the Avast forum (AF) site. Then I restarted WebWasher and eliminated switches one by one and reopening/attempting to surf AF. The actual option is ‘Animation’. With that one unselected I’m home and dry. I normally have it set on ‘Show only the first picture of an animation’.
Looking closer at my screen, while I’m waiting on AF, I can see the loading bar at the bottom of my screen just slowing down and then stopping. With other words incomplete download. Normally this bar just flashes thru.
Although the ‘problem is resolved’ I’m now intrigued why only AF is causing this with WebWasher?