Cannot Update Avast 5.0

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Running AVAST 5.0 on my wife’s win xp machine. Avast 5.0.677 has been running just fine w/ automatic updates for some time then my wife let me know that she saw that updates were not working. Checked myself and last successful update was in November. No new software, programs, or firewall configurations since before AVAST was loaded on system. I received these messages when trying to manually update both the program and the definitions:

“cannot connect to a710.sl.avast.com”
and also
“cannot connect to download678.avast.com (74.52.201.98:80)”

Has Avast been hijacked? Cannot find where to check the correct web address for updates in any of the settings.

2

Virus Update History http://www.avast.com/virus-update-history

3

Go to Control Panel and select Internet Options
Select the Connections TAB
Select LAN settings button
Ensure there is no tick in the Proxy Server box
Select OK and restart Internet explorer

The open Avast and go to updates
Click settings and check that the update window looks like this

4

Thanks, Essexboy. I followed your suggestions but still “no joy” for this Yankee. Any other thoughts?

Pondus, I saw your link too and thank you. However, I was looking for a setting in Avast that notes the web address for Avast to connect to to check for updates.

5

It is best not to have two topics on the go at once, this one ant the other that you jumped on board, http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=65783.0.

This just causes duplication of effort for those trying to help and confusion as to what has been asked and answered.

So I suggest you abandon one or other of them and only ask questions in one as I have answered this question in the other topic.

6

Thanks David and my apologies. I posted twice initially because the message board gave me a note on my other posting that it might not get answered because the subject was over 20days old. I’ll abandon the other and move on from here. None of the prior posts from you or the guys here have rectified the problem yet.

Any further advice is greatly appreciated.

7

You didn’t answer all of the questions in the other topic, you said no problems with the firewall. But you didn’t say what the firewall is nor we don’t know what you did, e.g. did you check avastSvc.exe was allowed and if so did you delete the entry as that should force it to ask again.

We ask specific questions to try and get to the root of the problem without the same specific/detailed answers we are working in the dark.

In the abandoned topic you said:

  • Having switched to direct proxy, you are saying that now avast is reporting it is up to date, which presumably means it is working (either auto update or manual update); yet in this topic you are saying it isn’t working, now I’m very confused as it can’t be up to date if it isn’t working. In order to be able to do that check it has to be able to connect.