I’ve had a stable system, using XP SP2 and Avast for about a year - working with no problems. Currently I’ve got 4.7.1001
For about two weeks now the system has developed a problem - after running completely normally for a few hours, Web Shield stops any access to the Web.
I’ve just proved this by stopping and starting the provider. (I didn’t realize Avast intercepted Web traffic, so it’s taken me a few days to narrow the problem down!)
It may be that this is connected somehow to running MusicMatch Jukebox (Version 8.10 which I’ve been using for 4 years), as when the system has failed, stopping and restarting this program will restore access (for a short while.)
At another time, closing all browsers and restarting did sometimes work.
To me this sounds like a bug in Avast - any opinions?
I can’t see how this can happen intermittently, web shield would be scanning all downloaded http port 80 traffic and you shouldn’t notice an effect, it should be either slow all the time or normal.
Because you say closing browsers and re-opening sometimes works to clear it if this was truely a web shield bug then that shouldn’t have any effect. I suspect some sort of interaction with another application, because by disabling web shield resolves it as you take one side of any potential conflict away.
The web shield doesn’t block, it scans and alerts to any infection, but it isn’t designed to block.
What other security based software do you have that might have an effect, e.g. anti-spyware applications, SpySweeper, Spyware Doctor, etc. ?
What changed two weeks ago, there has been a program update on 30 April 2007 so at the latest you are likely to have updated this (on the 7 day program update cycle) is on or about 5-7 May, around two weeks ago. Unless you had any other application installations or updates around that time ?
If it is related to the latest update then perhaps you should try a fresh/clean install:
It would probably be best to first download the latest version of avast http://www.avast.com/eng/programs.html and save it to your HDD, somewhere you can find it again. Use that when you reinstall.
Ensure you are off-line, uninstall, reboot, install latest version you downloaded, reboot.
Hi - Just accidentally found these replies. Sorry for the silence, I was expecting e-mail notification and didn’t get any, so I thought no-one had responded.
I managed to make the problem “go away” (I don’t remember how) so I didn’t chase it up.