Hi,
I’ve been using avast over a year. Past 2 days my email cannot send and receive. I think it was after an update (I’d heard the update voice from another room but didn’t think anything of it). Don’t think it’s avast, but not sure. Called my ISP (Commspeed) and they said line looked ok (I still can connect to the internet and get my email from webmail, that’s how I was able to click link to sign up for forum). ISP felt incoming message was too long or anti-virus program was causing the problem. Don’t be offended, they have never blamed anti-virus in the past. 
Yesterday I finally just rebooted and then all worked fine. Now, this morn it was fine. Log on again this afternoon and I have the same email problem. Before I restart again thought I’d ask forum. I paused internet mail and stopped internet mail from the avast icon with no luck. Also, the avast mail scanner icon on the taskbar is always on. I think that used to disappear after my email was done downloading. I have Win XP Sp 2 and use Outlook Express still. No other antivirus on my computer.
A side note: A month or so ago Outlook Express started giving me an error when I would click on an email link in emails. It said: Could not perform this operation because the default mail client is not properly installed. I’m still working on that also.
Any thoughts?
Thanks, Dan
Booted into Windows the other day and noticed the same problem (unable to send/receive email with avast! running), so it may be a problem with avast!
I haven’t seen any other reports of the same problem so it may only affect certain users with specific configurations.
???
Thanks for the info. I restarted my computer after I posted and now email coming and going fine. Weird!
But I’m starting to think it’s gonna happen again.
Dan
You noted that the problem occurred even with the avast Internet Mail provider terminated. In that circumstance avast is not involved in any way with the receiving or sending of your emails.
If the problem does occur again can you note the error messages from OE and let us know.
Hi,
thanks for your input. So, if I click on the avast icon on the taskbar and pause internet mail then that means avast is completely out of the picture?
Sounds good, but I want to make sure. Also, even when I paused the internet mail I still had another avast icon on the taskbar near the main icon that comes on when I send and receive email. That icon just stayed on. Usually it shows only when I send or receive and goes away after the task is done.
The only messages I get are after 60 seconds of OE trying to send/rec it brings up a window that says it has been trying to send/rec for 60 seconds and asks if I want to continue. I did once but it pretty much just does nothing and then the 60 second window pops up again. I don’t get any error messages.
I’ll let you know if I get any more info.
Thanks again, Dan
No,
avast is only out of the picture if you terminate the Internet Mail provider.
The avast icon remaining indicates that you still have an active mail connection.
Are any of your accounts IMAP?
Ok,
that’s why that icon is still there. So to terminate the internet mail provider what do I have to do? Hate to let my ignorance show, but I’m not familiar with IMAP. If you’re talking about email accounts I did not see any with IMAP.
Thanks again, Dan
Most email accounts with your email client are still likely to be POP/SMTP accounts.
In Outlook Express if you look at the “Properties” of a mail account and click on the “Advanced” tab it will tell you the incoming mail server is typically POP3 and the port number will usually be 110. That then is a POP account.
If the account is an IMAP account (for example free AIM.com accounts are IMAP) then in the “Advanced” tab in the OE properties it will tell the server is an IMAP server and the port number will usually be 143.
POP/SMTP connections are set up, the mail is received or sent and then the connections are taken down. You only get the icon in the system tray when the connections is busy receiving or sending and then the icon disappears.
For folks who have IMAP accounts the connection is kept up all the time and the accounts syncs with the server frequently. In this case the avast icon will stay in the tray all the time OE is open.
There are other reasons the icon can remain in the systray, most of them are not so good.
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fairly harmless … if you use a P2P program and the peer has told you to connect to them at their port 25, 110, 143 this can fool the avast Internet Mail provider into thinking this is a mail connection and showing the icon.
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if your accounts are experiencing delays or problems in receiving mail or sending it and retrying then the icon will appear for longer than usual
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of greater concern is the case where the icon continues to appear in the systray even when Outlook Express has been shutdown and explanation (1) above does not apply. This usually indicates that your system has been infected by a spambot which is using your system to generate large numbers of spam emails. This problem can usually be detected by avast (which will alert you) by setting the sensitivity slider in the Internet Mail provider to the “High” setting.
To completely shutdown the Internet Mail provider: Right click on the avast icon in the tray > Stop Provider > Internet Mail. When you do this (to see if it resolves your sending/receiving email issues) avast will ask if you want to “Persist the change”. I suggest you answer “No” so that avast will restart the Internet Mail provider on your next restart in case you forget to restart it. Only if you do want to keep the Internet Mail provider off permanently you would answer “Yes”.
Great information. Thanks much! I am POP3, 110. I have just set the avast slider to high. I run spyware a couple times a month but will run them now (spybot and adaware). And if I continue to have problems I can try your other suggestions. Thanks again, Dan
this is something to do w/Avast not outlook express as mine is doing this after the most recent update… no error msgs just the email incoming server is timing out after 1 min & only given option from OE to wait/stop. I have to totally stop the email scanning from Avast in order to get my emails… Avast please advise fix for this asap!!! thx
I beg to differ, if OE was working previously before an update, then it should be working after and update.
Was it working prior to the update ?
What version of avast are you using ?
What is your OS ?
I have been using OE6 for as long as I have had avast a little over 4 years, and I have never had a problem after an update with OE and the Internet Mail provider and not being able to send email that wasn’t down to my firewall blocking ashMaiSv.exe (even when it said it had permission) not avast blocking email.
You don’t say what that update was as a VPS update would have no impact at all only a program update would update the Internet Mail provider and the most common issue after a program update is a firewall blocking.
What is your firewall ?
Does it allow ashMaiSv.exe internet access ?
- If it does delete the entry for it, reconnect to the internet and try to collect your email, this will force the firewall to ask permission again.
OS is XP home, not using any firewall other than the firewall the Linksys wireless SRX200 router has. Im also using cat-5 my connection not wireless at this time.
Whatever the latest ver of Avast is, believe its 4.8 is what im using, have Avast set to auto update virus def/prog updates. not sure bout that VPS that u mention as in past ive never had a problem receiving/sending emails so unless the most recent avast update changed something to do w/the VPS then not sure where problem lies…Ive used OE for years myself as well.
AS I said changes in the VPS (virus signatures) wouldn’t have this effect.
The last program update was 4.8.1201 on 16/5/2008 now you should have received notification of that program update availability between the 16-23rd May as they are spread over 7 days to balance server load.
Does that coincide with the start of this problem ?
Does your router’s firewall provide outbound protection ?
If so you would need to check that.
- Try a repair of avast. Add Remove programs, select ‘avast! Anti-Virus,’ click the Change/Remove button and scroll down to Repair, click next and follow.
If that doesn’t work try, uninstall, reboot, install, reboot.
It would probably be best to first Download the latest version of avast http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html and save it to your HDD, somewhere you can find it again. Use that when you reinstall.
If not you should really consider a firewall that does provide outbound protection.
storkman,
does this problem occur every time you try to get your emails now?
how are you “stopping scanning” and when you do is the mail then always received successfully?
Have you made any changes at all to your email settings recently?
This has nothing to do with OE. I am having the same exact problem with Thunderbird since applying the 4.8.1201 Program update. Once, I was able to stop and restart the Internet Mail provider and get it to work. Today I have been unable to restart the provider. I, too, also had the Internet Mail icon in the taskbar stay even after I had canceled retrieving mail and even exited Thunderbird. I tried to stop all of the providers (Stop On-Access Protection), and instead of all of them stopping it attempted to stop Internet Mail once, then gave up (all other providers were still running). Trying again to stop all On-Access Protection finally did result in all of them stopping (after an abnormal delay, at which time the Internet Mail icon finally went away), but now the Internet Mail Provider will not restart. Attempting Termination seems to work, but upon starting it never gets past a status of “The provider is waiting for a subsystem to start.” Mail retrieval times out and fails.
I would be surprised if I had a spambot on my system, since I scan regularly (weekly on average) with Ad Aware, Spybot, and even Windows Defender (which I mainly use for real-time protection since I have had problems with Spybot’s Tea Timer). I also have not noticed any unusual system behavior or excessive utilization of my Internet connection.
I never had a problem before the 4.8.1201 update, and now this has happened to me twice. I have moved the sensitivity to High, just to be sure, and will monitor outbound connections on my system. But this smells like a fairly nasty little bug in Avast to me.
Unfortunately the smell cannot be detected by me or the folks I support. All of us are using the current production versions of avast and Thunderbird.
Does the problem with the Internet Mail provider (waiting for a subsystem to start) continue after a system restart?
If so then a “Repair” function of avast would probably be a good idea.
I restarted my system and it took about 3x longer than normal for it to logout and shut down. It restarted normally (quickly), the Avast providers all started (6 out of 7 because I do not have Outlook installed), and I was immediately able to retireve all of my mail. I can also Terminate and Restart the Internet Mail provider, and it restarts quickly and functions normally. Sensitivity is still set to high, and so far I have not seen any warnings (nor is the Internet Mail icon present). I will certainly post an update if that changes. Do you still think a Repair is in order? Anything else I can try to get to the bottom of this…?
Ok, sorry for the assumption. 
If not a bug, then a fairly nasty interaction, that was not present before I installed Build 4.8.1201 of Avast. Before the first time this happened, I had not recently made any other changes to my system aside from the Build 1201 update. However, the problem was not as bad the first time as it was today. The first time this happened, I was able to restart the provider and it functioned normally. Since then I have installed SP3 for Windows XP. Not sure if that could have made the symptoms worse, but if so it would be the first problem I have run into since installing SP3.
I’m also running with SP3. I installed that prior to the update to 4.8.1201.
Given that you have experienced these problems I think the repair function is worthwhile, but you may just want to wait and see. If this problem occurs again then I would suggest the repair would be a first step.
I will leave to the avast team any thoughts on what the Internet Mail provider could have been waiting on.
I should also add that, with regard to the first time this happened, “I was able to restart the provider and it functioned normally” actually means that I still had to stop it twice. (Stop means “Stop [all] On-Access Protection.”) Just like today, the IMP did not stop on the first try, nor did any other provider. But it did stop the second time I tried, and after that it restarted and functioned normally. The only other difference between the two occurrences was that after it hung up the first time, I just left it that way and walked away for about 10 minutes, to see if it would eventually work or time out. When I came back, Thunderbird had timed out and was displaying an error, but the IMP icon was still in the taskbar and repeated attempts to retrieve mail in Thunderbird just timed out. This was when I first tried to stop the provider.
Thanks for your help! Hopefully someone on the Avast team will come up with something…
As to the avast icon - are you using any IMAP accounts or are all your accounts POP?