Hello guy, I’m Ste from www.xboxmb.com I’m here now just to try and get my point across. With the update of Avast 5.0, Horizon (Program from Xboxmb) has being giving Horizon Users problems. We know this because ever problem people come across, the AV is always Avast… A few members on Xboxmb.com are wondering what’s the matter with Avast, why is it picking Horizon up as a danger, and not letting it load. Please Avast Developers, take another look at Horizon, and make sure you can help fix this problem! Please download Horizon using the link here : Horizon Download
Hi, I am a developer of Horizon from XboxMB.com. The application is standalone and doesn’t require an installation. The problem users have seem to be having is that Horizon will run (you can see it taking up a small amount of memory in task manager), but then is disappears without any errors, warnings, or forms. We were trying to figure out what was causing this for a good week, but one user eventually figured out it was Avast!. I told numerous users to uninstall Avast! and Horizon runs perfectly after that. I’m not exactly sure why this happens, but it won’t run even when Avast! is installed, but disabled.
I contacted Avast support about this last week, but I got no response.
Thank you!
If you must know, the tool is heavily obfuscated and runs in a virtual environment created by Xenocode application studio.
Avast is the main one, problems with Kaspersky and others, detect Horizon as a virus, and automatically delete them. Avast doesn’t! If you add Horizon to the exceptions/whitelist it still doesn’t work. On others it does.
There has to be some kind of heuristic match that is being picked up.
hmmm, I just ran it on an XP SP3 system running the latest version of Avast Internet Security with all shields enabled and the application connected fine.
Windows 7 64bit, it dumped whether or not I had Avast shields enabled
I honestly don’t understand what blocking means as avast essentially scans and alerts to infection, but it doesn’t block without some sort of alert/message.
If something doesn’t happen, like executing a file but it doesn’t run, this is normally associated to a conflict with another security application.
The fact some have added it to the Exceptions (whitelist) and it still doesn’t work is saying avast doesn’t consider it infected or it would have fired when executed prior to any exclusion. Note there are two exclusions file system shield for on-access and the avastUI, Settings, Exclusions for on-demand scans.
Something that you could try given what you said about it being obfuscated and running in a virtual environment, it would presumably require drivers running also to do that. I would suggest a) checking in the Behaviour Shield log file for any Horizon related processes, etc. C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Alwil Software\Avast5\report\BehaviorShield.txt (XP location, differs for Vista/Win7).
If there are any entries you could try adding the full path to the BehaviourShield, Expert Settings, Trusted Processes.
If there are no related entries in the BehaviorShield.txt then you could try disabling (Stop Permanently) the Behaviour Shield and reboot.
If that doesn’t work try uninstalling just the Behaviour Shield.
From windows Add Remove Programs, Change/Remove, select Change and uncheck the Behaviour Shield option, click Next and OK your way out, reboot and that should allow you to use the AOL software. See image, whilst this is for XP the process is the same for other OSes.
I installed Avast! myself to check it out and Horizon doesn’t load as expected. Spoon Studio and Xenocode do not load either after I did this. You can find Spoon Studio here: http://spoon.net/
After uninstalling the Behaviour Shield, all of the programs run perfectly. There’s nothing malicious about Horizon or Spoon Studio.
Edit: Horizon does not load when the Behavior Shield is disabled and when it is listed as an exception. It’ll only work when the shield is completely uninstalled.
I’m willing to work in any way possible to fix this. A good amount of my users use Avast! If it doesn’t work with Horizon, I will tell them to switch to another anti virus software or they won’t be able to use my program.
I have tried to have someone else to look at this topic as it is beyond my ability to do anything as an avast user.
Presumably this is with avast 5.1.889, I don’t know if the current avast 6.0 beta might be worth checking out to see if this has been resolved in avast 6 beta, http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=70435.msg590132;topicseen#new. It would however, require a clean install of the beta, uninstall existing version, reboot and install the beta.
I suggest this as the avast 6.0 stream is what is being developed right now and I don’t believe there are likely to be any changes in 5.1, so until avast 6.0 is released 5.1.889 is the last 5.x build.
Why tell then to switch when you can tell them to do exactly what I suggested to you, uninstall the Behaviour Shield and no problem.
I’ve uploaded my VB to the XboxMB forums, for uses to place on their HDD, only because Avast works for me. So it possibly could be their VB. I’m testing 6.0 at the minute. Thanks the feedback. Cheater will probably post soon!
