Hi. I’ve been using Avast4 home edition for months, and have been totally satisfied with the program. Thanks!!
Recently, however; since the last update a few days ago, I now get small pop-up windows from avast telling me various connection timeouts. For example, one I have at the moment reads:
Internet Connection timeout elapsed. Continue waiting? (explorer.exe -> 64.74.96.243:25).
When these pop-ups occur, it tends to kick me out of other programs I am running, mainly on-line multiplayer games. Is there a way to prevent these pop-up windows from occurring?
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!
When the timeout message comes from the mail client (such a ThunderBird or Outlook Express) it’s because these programs should send or receive mails and should be scanned by avast Mail Scanner. You could add your game into the IgnoreProcess list of avast4.ini file section [MailScanner]. For more details, click Settings in my signature
To help us further understand it please open the file C:\Program Files\ALWIL Software\Avast4\DATA\avast4.ini, insert this line Log=20 under [MailScanner] section.
[MailScanner]
Log=20
This will enable detailed logging.
Then try to reproduce the problem with timeout and post here the created log file (from C:\Program Files\ALWIL Software\Avast4\DATA\Log\avMaiSv.log.
Also please try to reproduce the problem with Internet Mail Provider disabled. Do you get any timeouts messages from you mail client when used without avast Mail Scanner?
I am not trying to send any mail and I cannot try to reproduce something I am not causing. It is not my gaming that is causing these, but it is what is being effected (among other things) by these constant pop-up windows about connection timeout. These pop-up messages about connection timeout have come from somewhere and I’d like to know how to make them stop. While gaming, as these things pop-up, one of two things happen…either I experience a huge lag spike in the game or my game minimizes. These pop-ups come from various IP’s as I posted previously, mail places such as yahoo (which I do not use), earthlink and many many others. I am not receiving any mail in my email account, nor am I sending any. But this is getting a bit rediculous and I’d like to find an answer to stopping it short of uninstalling what, up until the last few days, has been an excellent product.
I am pretty certain that Avast is just reporting a condition that is ocurring on your system.
It is not a normal condition to see explorer.exe connecting to port 25 of servers outside your system and, in your case, for a lengthy period.
Tech was just trying to get you to gather some documentation to try to see what is happening.
While this may be a case of one of your games using port 25 in a “non-standard” way, ie for something else other than email there is another known situation where these circumstances do occur.
There is a class of backdoor trojans that allow another computer to order yours to start sending out spam email and the trojan can hide itself behind explorer.exe (by doing that it can usually avoid any firewall you have from alerting you to its activities).
Apart from creating the log that Tech proposed to you a full virus and spyware scan of your system would be worthwhile.
May I assume that you did not intend for this email to be sent from your system?
If the answer is “no” and given the length of the mail log from Avast then I must conclude that your computer has been compromised by a backdoor trojan.
are you also using a firewall in additon to Avast?
Yes, I use the WinXP firewall, but no others. I've had problems in the past with a couple others.
After running a full avast scanning and/or a boot time scanning, use antispyware applications (freeware): download, install, update and run it.
Ad-Aware
Spybot Search and Destroy
Spywareblaster
A-squared
Ewido
I already use Ad-Aware and had ran a full scan of it earlier yesterday. All it removed was the “normal” tracking garbage that you get whenever you are on the internet.
I’m at work now, but I’ll try running a scan of both again when I get home. Thanks!
Windows firewall is only doing half the job, it doesn’t have any outbound protection, that is why emails (spam, etc.) are being sent without your interaction, your system doesn’t belong to you.
Regardless of the problems you might have had with some firewalls in the past you have to find one that works for you to provide outbound protection. Firewalls have been discussed extensively in the forums.
Just wanted to say thanks for the help with this, and hopefully its all sorted now. Did a thorough scan when I got home and avast4 found 2 trojans and they’ve now been removed. Hopefully all will be good now. Also in the process of choosing a new firewall so this doesnt happen again.
I dont remember now what Trojans Avast found. I deleted them as they were detected and didnt think to note the names.
I’ve downloaded and installed Kerio, but from what I see it allows all outgoing same as what you said about the built in XP firewall and I’m not finding how to change that.
How would I go about posting a view of the next pop-up?
For sure not… You must configure your firewall to ‘ask’ your what programs would be allowed to connect.
I suggest you visit the Kerio webpage and see the tutorials there
If you do not know how to do the screenshot of the popup then just as much of the contents as possible would be fine.
While I agree with all that has been said about firewalls by Tech and DavidR I do not want you to be under any illusions. Installing a firewall is not going to eradicate the problem in your system right now. It will certainly do a lot to make sure it cannot come back after you have have cleared the current problem.
