email problems, new installation of Avast!5 Pro

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hello all.

Avast! newbie here. I got tired of Kaspersky’s foibles, so when my license expired I bought Pro (5.?) earlier today (12 March) and installed it. It seemed to work, except that incoming e-mail failed to arrive.

The most recent topic regarding e-mail is dated 1 March, and has no responses. Earlier related topics asked why this old chestnut was being rehashed yet again. I respond: Perhaps because it’s still a problem?

Details:
OS is Win XP SP3
I use the Thunderbird (2.0.0.23) e-mail client. I do not use web-based e-mail.
Incoming: pop.att.yahoo.com, port 110, Use TLS if available.
Outgoing: smtp.att.yahoo.com, port 587, No secure connection

I could send mail, but could not receive it. The Get Mail did not fail, it just did nothing. The status bar indicated “Connecting” — forever.

In the following scenarios, I sent a test message to myself after each step. The message was sent, but never arrived.
I tried everything I could in Mail Shields.
I tried unchecking all checks (Incoming, Outgoing, News). No change.
I tried Stopping it for ten minutes. It stopped, but still no mail arrived.
I pushed the Start button again, but Avast showed no sign of detecting that. And the Start button was still showing.
I looked for a way to shut down Avast (you can do that with Kaspersky), if only to test the theory that it was the cause of the e-mail problem. There isn’t one. No UI to exit, no application to terminate with Task Manager. And when I tried to terminate the Avast process in TM, it refused.

So it seems the only way to get rid of it is to uninstall it. So I did. As soon as I rebooted, a pent-up flood of e-mail (including all my test messages) arrived.

I bought Avast primarily because of its glowing reviews on the TopTenReviews site. Before I file a dispute on the credit card payment, I’d like to see if anyone can suggest what I might be doing wrong and how to fix it. If you need more system information than I provided, let me know.

TIA

2

Uncheck “Use TLS if available”. Avast! takes care of setting up your secure links.

3

Thank you sded. That was all it took.

I did see a reference somewhere (forget whether it was here or in Avast Help) that said to disable SSL. Since SSL is a T-Bird option, but I had checked TLS (if available), I assumed I was OK.

I am glad it was so easy. I wish all such problems were.

Thanks again.

4

Glad it worked for you. ;D There really needs to be something in the FAQs like for the webmail discussion, and a big sticky for this one.

5

+1

Yes, not enough guidance for many users how to properly set that up. This MUST be added somewhere prominent in the GUI, like an “Email Client Setup Help”-Button on the Web-Shield page.

6

Perhaps it is time to re-introduce the avast email-wizard that was in 4.8 for those win9.x, winME users whose email account settings had to be modified to use the avast email proxy, etc.

7

+2 and include The Mail Shield may not scan some e-mails