After being infected by the KoobFace virus and not being able to get access to the Internet, I spent hours trying to diagnose the problem, I discovered that the issue is Avast 5.0 Free!!
Guess I don’t understand how or why the app would block all Internet traffic. The only web sites that I was able to get to were secure (HTTPS) servers. ???
Once I turn off the Web Shield, everything works fine.
Can anyone give me a clue as to what’s going on with the Web Shield?
Do you have a firewall ?
Did you have another antivirus before avast?
Did you try to repair (or reinstall) avast?
Yes, I have a firewall on my D-Link Router.
The virus software that I had before installing Avast was AVG. Have run Avast for years on several other PCs w/ no problems). Was trying out AVG to see how it compared. After getting the KoobFace virus and realizing that AVG did not have a Boot-Time scan option, I uninstalled it and installed the new version of Avast. That’s when I started having issues accessing http websites. No issue with sites running secure servers.
I “assumed” that the problem was due to the virus. After getting rid of the virus via MLB, problem continued. Issue was not a Firefox specific issue as same thing happened with Chrome. Not a network issue - my other PCs had no access problem. After trying a number of things, I uninstalled Avast (since I decided that was about when the problem happened) and the problem went away. Installed AVG - no problem. Uninstalled AVG and re-installed Avast - problem reoccurred.
Strange. Personally I’d prefer to run Avast - it’s clearly a better product. Just can’t figure out why it’s blocking my Internet access.
AVG Remover can be downloaded here: http://www.avg.com/download-tools
Try an installation from the scratch after that:
OK, don’t know what the difference is between the AVG Remover you mention at the top of the post and the Uninstall Utility you mention in step 1, but I followed your steps 1-5 with the exact same results.
The only way that I can access the Internet is to turn off the Web Shield.
OK, don't know what the difference is between the AVG Remover you mention at the top of the post and the Uninstall Utility you mention in step 1,The one on top is for AVG The one in step Nr.1 is for avast
I was trying to isolate the trouble. You need to fully remove AVG before testing avast, so the first uninstaller.
The second was to perform an avast installation from the scratch.
@ the OP: what’s your operating system (Windows version and service pack)?
Yep, got it and that makes sense. I had to use the AVG uninstaller because after the normal AVG uninstall, there was still an AVG service running. Even after stopping the service, it would start again. So I ran the AVG uninstaller, then ran a clean Avast install. Same results. Well, at least now that I’ve finally figured out what was blocking my Internet access, but it does seem strange.
My operating system is MS XP Home SP3.
Looks like I’m not going to get any additional advice on solving this issue, since I haven’t seen any postings to this thread in a couple of days.
I’m modifying the title of the OP to read “UNRESOLVED”.
FYI - this is not the first time this issue has occurred with Avast, as I found a number of posts from users that have experienced the exact same issue - i.e. - Avast blocking access to the Internet.
The common respponse in those posts seems to be “Avast does not act as a firewall and only “scans” content, so the problem must be elsewhere” is not only a wholly inadequate non-answer, but denies that there is a problem exists and worse, fails to answer the question - which is why it’s still a problem after being reported a number of times.
The fact that I can go from complete denial of access to ANY HTTP site to full access to ANY HTTP site, simply by toggling the Avast Web Shield on and off tells me that the problem lies with Avast, and not elsewhere. I’ve come to expect this kind of answer from Microsoft Tech support, but not here.
FYI - I found threads going all the way back to 1996 reporting this issue.
Lets see…
After being infected by the KoobFace virus and not being able to get access to the Internet
Well, we can make a fullstop here. Help: I Got Hacked. Now What Do I Do?. Following the advice linked there, you’ll get a sane system and unblocked internet access. 
Sorry, guess I don’t see your point - how does this information address my problem - am I missing something?
KoobFace didn’t cause my Internet to be blocked. I had access after I used MalWareBytes to clean it. I didn’t start having access problems until I uninstalled AVG and installed Avast. In fact, the way I discovered that Avast was the culprit was that I uninstalled ALL virus software - no AVG, no Avast, and voila, problem solved.
Then re-installed Avast, and the problem came back. Turn off the Web Shield the problem comes back, turn it on, it goes away.
Sorry, not trying to be rude, but from what I read, your link doesn’t address the issue I’m having.
As the saying goes “if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck…”
Yes, apparently. Missing this:
The only way to clean a compromised system is to flatten and rebuild. That’s right. If you have a system that has been completely compromised, the only thing you can do is to flatten the system (reformat the system disk) and [b]rebuild it from scratch[/b] (reinstall Windows and your applications). Alternatively, you could of course work on your resume instead, but I don’t want to see you doing that.
I’m telling you that you should reinstall your OS from scratch. That for sure will address your problem, like it’d address all sorts of doesn’t install/run/block/crashes/whatnot problems on this forum. People keep wasting incredible amount of time fiddling with broken system (years old install with tons of leftovers of previous AVs, firewalls, malware and broken applications) instead of spending much less time by reinstalling their OS and applications and getting clean, fresh, fast-running nonbroken computer again.
People keep wasting incredible amount of time fiddling with broken systemAnd if you want to fiddling a bit more.......you may try this guide from Essexboy, post the logs and let him have a look inside ?
OK, well that may be the case. Done it before, can certainly do again.
I do have to wonder about the repeated reports of blocked access with Web Shield after updating to 5.0. Have used previous versions for many years on two other computers and never a problem.
But, I’ll leave it at that. Haven’t upgraded my other two machines yet. Have to do that and see if I have similar results or not.
Thanks.
I know it’s annoying to reinstall but I find this the best approach in general. Also, having regular images of your OS is useful. Definitely worth the effort to make one once you’ve finished setting up your system and have everything in place and running.
I only ever had similar issues (doesn’t install/some shields not running/takes ages to load/crashes/…) on old systems installed years ago. Never ever on a clean fresh system. Getting it to work is a great excercise if you are masochistic and like to dig into things, but… extremely ineffective considering the time spent on it. So, the only positive is the learning experience perhaps. Note that NONE of the systems I didn’t reinstall was actually infected. All problems caused by previous security software incompletely uninstalled, leaving drivers, services, registry crap and whatnot there.
If I encounter an infected machine, I format it. While people dislike it at the beginning, since usually the computer comes to me with tons of junky apps installed, plus a bunch of stolen games etc., they in most cases are very happy after getting their computer back in clean, sane state when it runs and doesn’t take half an hour to just boot.