Yesterday I clicked on a window to update Avast. I did not touch any settings recently. Now I notice my email is not downloading into Thunderbird automatically from my Pop 3 account. So I turned Avast off for 10 minutes and my mail program works again.
What settings in Avast do I change to let my mail through again? It was working fine as late as yesterday.
Hi have you tried turning off the web shield? What OS are you running Avast on? They just rolled out an updated web Shield that is causing people many problems.
How do I turn off JUST the web shield? And wouldn’t that defeat the whole purpose of Avast?
What I did was right-click on the program icon in the taskbar and select avast shield controls>Disable for 10 minutes. Then my mail downloads normally.
I am running Windows XP.
Again, a window popped up asking me to update, I clicked on “continue” or “ok” or something like that. And ever since, my mail is stuck in the cloud.
Hmm Ok Avast recently made some adjustments which where for Windows 7 and 8 not sure if this default updated has installed this copy. What version of avast are you running? Avast has reduced done of the shields into one single shield. I’ll post back with information on how to disable the shields individually soon.
Why would I want to disable a shield individually? That doesn’t sound like a good permanent solution. Or do you mean just for the email program or email accounts?
There must be some setting that is fouling things up. But again, I did not touch one setting over the last few days. The update somehow changed things.
Hey LGM, You said when you disabled all the shields the issue went away. I’m trying to troubleshoot the issue and figure out if this bug is connected to a recent implementation of the rebuilt avast web shield system. The new version had API hooks written just for Windows 7 and 8 this could cause the shields not to work. Hence why I’m trying to figure it the issue and fix.
Avast>Settings>Active Protection>Mail Shield. See if that works. I would keep the other shields on for now so we can rule out which shield is affecting your problem. I think this could be a Mail shield issue.
I turned off the mail shield and everything works. So it is the mail shield. Now how to fix it?
At least I can turn the other shields on now. The mail shield is probably the least important of all the 3 shields as I am super careful about opening mail. But it would be nice to get it back.
As a matter of fact, yes. It is my primary email account. However, I have multiple accounts set up in Thunderbird, including some from Yahoo, Gmail, and Outlook.com.
I did not know that fastmail does its own virus protection. It is good to know!
Some other folks that had email problems tried this:
From the avast GUI click “Settings” → “Active Protection” → “Web Shield” (click the gear symbol on the right) → then while in the Main Settings window put a check mark in the “Scan traffic from well known browser processes only”.
I did not know that fastmail does its own virus protection. It is good to know!
so does you other accounts
yahoo use Norton for virus/spam
outlook / hotmail use TrendMicro but there own spam filter
Gmail use postini spam/virus filter with two AV engines from Authentium and McAfee
Unfortunately, I have no clue…
I can only guess that it is better than turning off the shield itself but what it means I’ve never seen on threads.
…however, some folks have had problems with SSL connections, some with outbound and not inbound on Outlook email program, etc.
This seemed to be what fixed…all be it “temp” in my mind.
The other option is to try the new BETA…but I’d assume it will be released in few weeks hopefully. http://forum.avast.com/index.php?board=15.0
If/When that a happens go back and uncheck and see if works.
At least with that option there is no yellow caution symbol on top of the avast tray icon and the main avast winjdow gives a green checkmark saying everything is OK – unlike when I disable the mail shield.
If I put on the new beta do you know if I can revert back to the current version if the beta gives me problems?
I wish I could be of more help…just a poster…not an expert…to answer your question…I don’t know.
However, there is Forum for the BETA…post there and ask…I’m sure it has been done or at least asked before.
Of course you can always do the uninstall BETA, re-install latest thing.
FYI: summary thread I started on this that summarizes clean-install a lot of other folks posts: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=143284.0
You can revert back from the BETA to the current release by simply removing (uninstalling) the BETA, using the uninstall tool and then installing the current version.
If your running Windows XP or Vista I would recommend trying to use this workaround provded by Lukor.
Avast is working on patching the shield and hopefully by this weekend we should see an improvement. Until then Proxy mode is your best option. The beta version doesn’t fix the problem at the moment however AVAST is working on a fix which should be out in a week. Until then your best bet will be to use the proxy mode provided. Bascially avast rewrote the new web shield with the WPI (Windows API) which is still a little rough around the edges, Working only on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 Windows Vista and XP are not supported by the new web shield so proxy mode will be needed.