Help! I just spent 90 minutes on the phone with my ISP, and we narrowed it down to a problem with my avast! blocking something. I cannot access google, hotmail, or my newspapers, to name a few. Does anyone have an answer for me?
Can you access some pages, or is the Internet access blocked completely?
Do you use any firewall? If yes, did you grant network access for avast! processes?
Does it help if you stop the avast! WebShield provider?
Yes, I can access some pages, like yahoo and avast. I have whatever avast! offers as far as protection. If avast! has a firewall, then I’m using theirs, if not I’m not using one except the one that is on windows. How do I stop the WebShield provider?
Click on avast! icon (the spinning “a” ball) and scroll down to Webshield provider, If you want to stop it completely, click on “Terminate” or right click the spinning “a” icon go to “Stop Provider” and click on webshield, that’s another way to do it.
Also note avast! is just a antivirus program, no firewall is included.
Okay…I did that. Disabled the Webshield. I still can’t access the sites. I only have The windows firewall, then, and it indicates that it is on.
Try Terminating Standard Shield and see if that helps.
Standard Shield doesn’t have anything to do with network connections. If terminating Web Shield didn’t help, then the problem is probably not caused by avast!.
What operating system is it - WinXP?
I’ve disabled all, and it still isn’t working. Yes, I have widows XP.
avast doesn’t have a firewall and if you are browsing the web without one, you are plauing Russian Roulette with an automatic; there is every likelihood that your system doesn’t belong to you.
I suggest you use one of the free firewalls available like Zone Alarm that has a relatively friendly user interface.
If you haven’t already got this software (freeware), download, install, update and run it.
- Ad-Aware
- Spybot Search and Destroy
- Spywareblaster Don’t install this until you are clean.
- Download HijackThis.zip - HiJackThis Tutorial