Avast - Too many connections that don't ever go away.

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hey, can someone please let me know what’s going on here, I have Avast 5 free edition and the avastsvc.exe seams to be leaking connections somewhere as connections seam to be piling over time and they never go away. They don’t go away even after I close all my browsers, they don’t go away even when I block all traffic network with my firewall, they are like network leeches from hell that just keep sucking on the avastsvc.exe process and you can’t get them off.

My computer is not infected with anything, and there’s no process keeping up those connections besides avastsvc.exe itself. The connections appear to be “leftovers” from my Internet browsing activity that avast just doesn’t want to let go of, it’s really driving me nuts.

2

The avastSvc.exe is the main avast service and controls all the avast Shields, so that includes the web shield and network shields which monitor all of your internet traffic, but it doesn’t initiate it. So those HTTP connections are when your browser initiates a connection it is redirected through the web shield proxy so that the http traffic can be scanned.

I don’t know why they might still be present or where you are actually getting this data in the image from ?

My firewall shows the proxy traffic image1, but TCP View doesn’t show it hanging on to anything and that whilst I’m on-line posting this (but no activity) image2.

3

That screenshot of mine is from outpost firewall network traffic monitor. I know it’s normal for that process to have network traffic, but it’s not normal for the connection not to close/disappear after I close the browsers and when my computer is just idle doing nothing. Personally I think the application has a bug and it “forgets” to close them down.

4

The connection is dropped some time after the browser/tabs are closed… But, indeed, not too long.
Are you using any other application that uses HTTP?

5

Well my screenshot, first one is from outpost pro 2009 firewall listing in the event viewer function, presumably you are on the new version 7 outpost firewall (I’m waiting a while before I consider installing it, even though I have a lifetime license.

My network activity in outpost pro 2009 is virtually zero whilst posting this (image) as there isn’t any active connection (traffic) for avastSvc.exe.

So I don’t know what was going on in the background whilst this was in network activity as avast doesn’t initiate the connection of its own volition.

6

Well that’s the thing, there’s no traffic, the connections are not active, they are just hanging there doing nothing. When I took the screenshots I wasn’t doing anything and the browser was closed down, in fact I did everything that was in my power to shut down the connections, I even tried “break connection” from outpost, and they just don’t want to die. Considering outpost can’t shut them down, it’s obviously that avast is “protecting” them, which enforces the reason why I believe it’s avast itself who is just “leaking” them. I don’t pretend to know anything about how avast was written but I’m a programmer and from this perspective all my suspicions point to avast. I’m not saying that avast is entirely the problem here, but maybe it’s something that occurs within a certain context, operating system, or whatever else.

I’m running Windows 7 Ultimate, 64bit version on an i3 dual core pentium, my outpost version is pro 2009 with lifetime license too… As you can see in my second screenshot (posted here) I’ve got those connections stuck there for 5 hours now, they are obviously not going to disappear till I restart, but I’ll monitor the situation and come back here with updates, maybe someone can figure this out.

The thing is, I’ve been using this avast free + outpost for almost 2 years now and I’ve never had this problem of connections not dying out, I always had avast pop up many connections and that’s normal considering the web traffic (I don’t use any desktop email clients, just web based) the only thing that does network traffic on my end is the occasional software updates/checks, multiplayer/online games, web browsers, and my 2 IM applications google talk and yahoo messenger, oh and occasionally avast and outpost ofc. The thing is, I have only started using windows 7 this year once I bought my new PC, so this may be a windows 7 related issue because I never had this problem before, when I was using windows xp, also, the second thing that changed besides the OS, was the avast version, on my XP machine I used to have the same outpost 2009 pro but I was running avast 4.x (the one with the old blue “a” icon).

Hope this info helps anyone following this issue, I have a feeling I’m not the only one with this problem, I’ll keep tracking the problem and will post more info here or a solution if I ever find one.

7

…forgot to attach the screenshot (same “stuck” connections even after 5 hours)…

8

Ok here’s what I just did. I downloaded TCPView and took a look at the connections and I couldn’t find any of the “hanging” connections that outpost shows, under tcpview. However, I did the following, I disconnected the network, shut down outpost completely, then restarted outpost (while disconnected) and the same connections show up.
And in the last 15 minutes I gathered up +2 “fresh” connections that apparent’y won’t go away either. There’s one persistent thing about them though, they are all HTTP connections, every other type of connection gets “released” properly.

9

Given that you have run TCP View any found none of the alleged hanging connections, then in theory they shouldn’t exist in outposts network activity log. That would lead me to believe that this is an outpost 2009 and win7 issue as outpost doesn’t seem to be clearing ‘its connection cache/data log.’

I don’t know if outpost 2009 is fully compatible with win7 64bit.

Since you have a lifetime license for Outpost, perhaps it might be worth checking out the new outpost 7, which is meant to be more compatible with win7.

10

I just did a fresh install of OP 7, hopefully the problem will be solved.

11

Fingers crossed, but I rather think it may be outpost pro 2009 that may be the issue in win7.

12

I think you might be right, I don’t know how I ended up using the 2009 version somehow I was under the impression that it supports win 7, probably I was looking at the specs for the v7 version. I gotta say that OP7 x64 seams to be working much smoother than the older version, haven’t had seen the connection issue popping up yet also, might be too soon to tell though.

Thanks for the help anyway, I’ll come back and post an update in a few days.

13

No problem, glad I could help.

A belated welcome to the forums.

14

I get the same large number of connections showing with the Comodo Firewall but since I know that Comodo lags badly at updating the connection info, I know that they are shut down long before Comodo shows it. The firewall icon in the tray shows no activity when the browser shuts down but the connections of avastsvc persist for a few minutes in Comodo’s connection list.

In Comodo, all connections behave that way in the list, not just the avastsvc ones. Maybe the same thing is true of Outpost.

15

The problem the OP is reporting is a bug that unfortunately also occurs with other FW’s. The problem is that the FW attempts to connect, add that to the “list” and never removes the line if the connection attempt either fails or has expired. This is a bug that the devs. need to correct with the FW and due to poor programming.

TCP_View and Net_Worx uses Windows API to get a list of the connections at the moment in time in the state of the connection: Connecting, Connected, Waiting to close, etc, and refresh their list every second or manually. That is why the OP found no issue when he tested it with TCP_View; this shows that it is a bug with OTPost.

Why it affects one build and/or one version of machine? This is supposed to be properly tested during the beta phase and perhaps there was a rush to push out the Win7 64-bit or the build of OTPost itself…I cannot answer that question. But this is why one person is affected and another is not.

@ vxcriss, I would post your question on the OTpost forum. I’m sure you are not the only one with this issue. It is not an Avast issue.

16

Apparently upgrading to OP7 fixed the problem, at least in the last 7-8 hours I’ve been looking at it. So yes it must have been outpost.

17

Hopefully it stays “fixed.” I would still let the OTPost people know about the bug. In the meantime, enjoy surfing again. :wink:

18

If you read the OPs reply #11, having reinstalled win7 and used the latest Outpost version 7, which is meant to be fully compatible with win7, this problem doesn’t occur (so far).

So as I said I think it was a case of Outpost pro 2009 (version 6.x) not being fully compatible with win7, but then again it came out earlier than win7, so I wouldn’t expect it to be fully compatible.

19

I agree with you DavidR. The OP needs to report this in the OTPost forum as there is a problem with programming with the FW that will not affect all users. I wanted the OP to know that this was not an Avast issue, but rather his FW and should follow up appropriately.

20

im having the same problems, i had my internet installed and ran a speed test and was only getting about 30meg instead of 60, i found that if i uninstall avast i get my 60meg and if i dont then it is opeing too many connections thus loosing internet speed???