Avast Premier v2016.11.1.2245
Avast Online Security v11.1.0.210
Google Chrome v47.0.2526.106 m (64-bit)
Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1
Since installing the above-listed Avast software, Wikipedia pages load, but many images contained in those pages do not load.
They are instead replaced by the standard “missing image” placeholder.
Clicking on the image placeholder (to start the Wikipedia Image viewer) results in a “404 not found” error.
After I disabled the Avast extension and restarted Chrome, the images all loaded correctly.
I discovered this by a process of elimination: I also have an ad-blocking extension installed, and, as it was a new one, I thought that maybe it was misbehaving, so I uninstalled it, but the problem still remained. I have no other extensions installed which could interfere with the display of normal web pages, (except for the Avast extension, that is).
My procedure was as follows:
I uninstalled the Avast extension, and Wikipedia started behaving correctly.
Then I re-installed the ad-blicking extension (uBlock Origin), and Wikipedia still behaves correctly.
I re-installed the Avast extension, and Wikipedia started misbehaving again.
I uninstalled the Avast extension once again, and Wikipedia works correctly again.
Until there is a new update for the Avast extension, it will remain uninstalled.
If you need further information, please reply to this post.
Thanks and regards
Christopher Souter
(Sydney, Australia)
I presume that by “AOS,” you mean “Avast Online Security,” and, if you look at it, you will see that I did actually have it listed at the top of my original post.
If that is what you mean, then the answer is “Yes,” I am talking about the AOS Chrome extension.
With regard to Wikipedia, I cannot supply a specific link, for the following reason:
I am a very frequent visitor to Wikipedia, and I don’t usually record the URL for every single page that I consult, much less do I record the result when I load each page.
However, when I was doing my bit of detective work to determine which extension was affecting Chrome’s rendition of Wikipedia pages, I simply visited the Wikipedia English home page at:
The tests I performed worked on that page in the same way as they have been doing since I first encountered the problem, so, I would suggest that the Wikipedia English home page is as good an example as any; after all, that page usually contains plenty of images, at least as many as one would find in any given Wikipedia article.
Is it just in Chrome that you see the problem or also in other browsers ?
Do you have any other security (related) software installed ? (or did you)
Have you used something like CCleaner or the Glary Utilities to cleanup things and checked if it made a difference ?
Are you using a proxy server or something like that ?
