This seems to be happening on win 64 bit edition, according to what I have learned.
Hiya Folks,
Shane from AOL here. We have reached out to Avast regarding the complaints we’ve been seeing and hearing to help find a solution for both our customers. In the meantime you should still be able to access everything you need from AOL by visiting AOL.com. In our testing the disabling the shields has not proven successful in all cases, however uninstalling has. We don’t want to see you running w/o any AV protection, so our best advice is to use aol.com until we can figure out what’s up.
Hope this is helpful!
Shane
(edit: spelling!)
Hi Shane, welcome to the forum 
Did you test/try uninstalling just the Behavior Shield as Vlk suggested ? Because there is no feedback so far about that option.
Greetz, Red.
In our testing we’ve tried the “disable all shields” option and uninstalling the product completely. I wasn’t aware of the ability to uninstall a single piece of the application. I’ll do some testing and report back.
Another sidenote that may be of interest to the forum. We have found that this is difficult to replicate on a “clean machine” (freshly installed OS, AOL and Avast.) The problem does not seem to replicate under those conditions. However “machines in the field” where users have multiple applications installed we’ve been able to replicate.
Does this Behavior Shield take in account the number of open ports / connections of a particular type?
Shane
I have no idea. But I will contact Vlk with your question.
Greetz, Red.
We’re now working on this.
I’d like to ask for a little patience here. In the meantime, please use avast with Behavior Shield uninstalled (see my post above).
Thanks, and sorry for the hassle.
Vlk
I did as you advised Vik, and it worked. I uninstalled that shield, and it rebooted and I am currently on AOL. When I look at the shields in my Avast, that one does not even show up anymore. The thing that concerns me, is how vulnerable am I without the behavior shield in place? I really hope you guys come up with a solution soon. I have never seen anything like this before. AOL affects a lot of people! I know you did not intend for this to happen of course, but this is pretty big. It also caused many people unnecessary hours of them making unnecessary changes to their computer only to realize it was Avast of all things! Frustrating. I really hope you guys get this fixed and soon. Thank you for your help and the suggestion about the Behavior Shield. Have a great afternoon…
I’m sure you are doing all you can, and its greatly appreciated.
I have the same problem but I’ve already un-installed avast and I am using another anti-virus program til this gets resolved so I don’t know if I should re-install avast and then try to disable the shields. I run windows 7 and everything everyone here has posted is happening to me,do you think if I went back to 5.0.677 it would fix this til the bug gets worked out,the link is here,
http://filehippo.com/download_avast_antivirus/
I,ve un-installed and re-installed avast numerous times today so i don’t know if I’ve done any thing to screw things up beyond the original problem. I know everyone is trying to get this fixed ASAP and I do appreciate your efforts.
The official work around whilst they are investigating this would be the preferred option as you would retain the other advantages of 5.1.889.
Have a quick question,I’ve installed another anti-virus program already and I can “turn” it off so to speak. I don’t want to uninstall it until i find out if the disabling of the shields will temporaryly fix this,so my question is,can I re-install avast without uninstalling the other program and leave it off,and if this temp fix works I’ll just uninstall that other program. Thanks I really would rather use avast as I think its a great program!
I’m sure in your job you know you can’t do things in half measure, it has to be all out or nothing.
You have to uninstall it, you can’t just turn it off as it still loads low level drivers and that could conflict with avast, even possibly during installation and that would make it a pointless trial.
The official work around of uninstalling the Behaviour Shield is working for others, so that is the way I would go.
You have the opportunity to do a custom install of avast 5.1.889 and during that custom install you can uncheck the Behaviour Shield during the install and not need to do it after.
Download 5.1.889 before uninstalling the other AV, reboot and do a custom install of avast 5.1.889.
I can confirm that the workaround of uninstalling / not installing the behaviour shield with v5.1.889 works here, running Windows 7 x64. I personally don’t use AOL but the other two machines that do were able to log in successfully. I have to assume everything else with AOL is fine, but I will report here if the AOL users report any trouble after re-installing build 889 without the behaviour shield.
My very last question b 4 I try this,can I just uncheck the behavior shields after I install avast using the interface? I don’t know if I can do any changes using my control panel, if I read one of the posts correctly it says you use your control panel. I’m a computer novice so all of this is kinda hard for me. I have to go out,will try to reinstall later on. I will also uninstall the MSE I installed prior to reinstalling avast and let everyone know how i made out.
You have to follow the instruction as given there is no uninstall option within the avastUI.
You have posted in so many topics it is hard to keep track but I have posted an image of the add remove programs, change interface. http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=69664.msg585071#msg585071.
All you have to do is get into the control panel, I don’t know what OS you are using as you haven’t created a signature in your forum Profile. But if you use the windows Help and Support, search for Control Panel or Add Remove Programs and that should point you in the right direction.
You should be able to access it from windows explorer as there is usually a link to the Control Panel, see image.
Wow good results,did as advised and can get on AOL but could someone tell me what “behavior shields” are and when this gets fixed is it an easy thing to reinstall that component. I’m sorry I have so many posts but when it comes to computer problems I get really worried about how to fix things as I’m a real novice. Thanks
Please use Show new replies to your posts.
That’s right below MY MESSAGES LOGOUT
I don't know what OS you are using as you haven't created a signature in your forum ProfileIt would help if you added a signature with system information.
The behaviour shield is looking out for strange/unusual behaviour.
- avast! Behaviour Shield, general information from an interview Softpedia - Ondrej Vlcek
[b]Ondrej Vlcek:[/b] The Behaviour Shield that we shipped in version 5.0 is a new component that is going to be further developed moving forward. For example, in version 5.1, we will be adding more sensors that will allow for even finer-grain filtering.For now, the Behaviour Shield is focused on exploits coming via typical mechanisms (browser, PDF reader, and flash vulnerabilities, for example). It also closely monitors all kernel-mode code (drivers) loaded into the operating system, and is able to detect zero-day rootkits.
Also see, http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=68607.0:
Reinstalling is simply the reverse of what I said earlier in my last post, Reply #33 above.
Reporting back - Uninstalling the behavior shield has proven successful. Disabling it - not so much.
Our engineers have been working closely with Avast engineers and it’s sounding like good progress is being made. So hang in there!
Shane
David
Had the same problem with Avast blocking my AOL connection after the latest software update. After several calls to TS (And Avast agents denied it was a problem with the Avast software) and losing half a days work with no resolution I found your info.
By your advise I uninstalled Avast and AOL. Reinstalled AOL without Avast and program returned to normal.
I reinstalled Avast Internet Security without the Behavior shields and rebooted computer.
AOL functions normal now with both programs installed minus the behavior shields.
Running windows 7 (64 Bit)
Hopefully you can resolve this situation and release a patch or a software update soon.
Thanks
You’re welcome, hopefully it will soon be resolved.