avast's firewall and pc controls moieties = problematical potential?

avast 4.7.1098 is God sent!-- it has saved me countless times in the past year.

it has recently come to my attention that avast has a small firewall capability. i have been experiencing a few networking problems; my isp has suggested several times that it might be related to the firewall. where can i learn the details of avast’s firewall - i need to know whether it conflicts with the native vista firewall?

i also just learned that avast 4.7.1098 has pc controls; i wonder whether these functions might conflict with native vista capabilities, or that of my antimalware (i must ask this to lavasoft!). where can i learn the details of avast’s pc controls - i have not looked, but it has been my experience that the genre of the avast help machinery is not sympathetic to these questions.

thanks.

umm…i’m pretty sure avast! does not act like a firewall. About the only way it could act like a firewall would be if it blocked a harmful application from downloading from the net. I could be wrong on this one, but I know you shouldn’t have two firewalls running at once, and every avast! user has another firewall (or should have one). My firewall recommendations are: zone alarm free, comodo, or PC Tools firewall. (my personal favorite is comodo, but i will probably get stoned by the avast! forum guys for even mentioning that)

The Network Shield shouldn’t be confused with a firewall as it is only monitoring for common worm attacks, see extract of avast help file image.

What are these PC Controls you mention that 4.7.1098 has ?

:slight_smile: Hi :

 Unless you have a "PAID" version of Ad-Aware, I recommend you uninstall
 it, since it is no longer a top antispyware/antitrojan program . You would
 have better protection using a program like the FREE version of
 "SUPERAntiSpyware" from www.superantispyware.com .

Well URL Blocking I wouldn’t call a PC Control but blocking URLs that ‘you’ don’t want to be loaded in your browser.

It should have zero impact on any local network problems as it uses domain names not IP addresses and ‘you’ have to input the URL to block, it isn’t an autonomous tool but a manual one.

The image attached to the post is an extract of the avast help file about the Network Shield (click it to enlarge).

I recommend you uninstall it,
are you suggesting that Ad-Watch/Ad-Aware can cause networking problems? can you explain the technical connection?
You would have better protection using a program like the FREE version of "SUPERAntiSpyware" from www.superantispyware.com .
many thanks for this lead!

I don’t believe Spiritsongs is suggesting adaware or adwatch is responsible for your networking problems, just that he feels adaware is no longer a heavyweight anti-spyware tool.

Your selective quote doesn’t say why he feels you should uninstall it, which had nothing to do with network problems.

Unless you have a "PAID" version of Ad-Aware, I recommend you uninstall it, since it is no longer a top antispyware/antitrojan program . You would have better protection using a program like the FREE version of "SUPERAntiSpyware"

Since you mention adwatch I can only assume that you have the paid version of adaware, so he has qualified his recommendation to uninstall.

The image attached to the post is an extract of the avast help file about the Network Shield (click it to enlarge).
thanks for this -- it is right on point! where can i find the full manual from which this came?

Click on … Start > Programs > avast! antivirus > Help

This will open the avast help window where you can find this and much more information.