Hi,
just updated Avast Home to 4.5.549 and can no longer connect to the IMAP server at work.
Tried to pause the ‘Internet mail’ provider but that doesn’t help ; I have to do a complete ‘Stop on-access protection’ to get access to the IMAP server … something in Avast is blocking port 143.
is this a known problem/feature ?? any workarounds/solutions ??
What OS?
Any error(s) in Avast’s log file?
The version 4.5 has a new mail detection that will work automatically. Please, set up your email account just as avast does not exists. It will detect the pop3/smpt/imap ports and scan your messages. You won’t use 127.0.0.1 address under Windows XP\2k anymore.
New email detection is automatic and do not require user interaction. Anyway, spam killer applications need manually change email account settings 
Reading the forum I found that IMAP in Thunderbird could have some troubles (concurrency with Standard Shield scanning): http://forum.avast.com/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=9493
Found more information: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=9523
Hope this helps…
that’s about TheBat (POP3) problems, not Thunderbird (IMAP) … ??
Please check this thread:
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=8967;start=15
The problem seems to be how Thunderbird handles IMAP downloads - the changes in the settings of Thunderbird as explained in the above thread may solve Your problem
br
Peter
I can not even connect anymore to the IMAP server, the problem starts before even listing or downloading messages on the server …
also ; i had no previous problems with the combination Avast (4.1) and Thunderbird. problem started after upgrading to Avast 4.5.
Could You please give us more informations:
Have You followed Technicals advice concerning mail setup ?
Do You use a firewall and if yes is it configured correct for Avast ?
br
Peter
the thing is, this setup worked when i used Avast 4.1 and it didn’t work anymore after upgrading to 4.5 … and it works again when I shut down Avast’s on-access protection !!
so IMHO it seems to be Avast 4.5 blocking access, not one of the other programs.
are you referring to the “W32.Beagle not recognised” thread again ?? the post about changing mailnews.js ??
as i said before : my problem is not Avast not scanning IMAP mail with Thunderbird, I can not even connect anymore to the IMAP server after upgrading to Avast 4.5 …
Sorry, was my fault >:( - was thinking the problems are in scanning files
Could You pls try following:
a) pls check if Outlook/Exchange provider is running - if yes terminate it - if You don’t use Outlook, then theres no need for it anyway
b) pls decativate Outpost and check if it’s working ?
c) have You tried a repair of Avast ?
d) is it working if You disable scanning of incoming mails ?
e) is it working if You terminate the standard shield ?
If it does not help, pls increase the log level of avast to 20 and check the log files.
I’m sure we find a solution for Your problem - there’s so many experts here in this forum - far more experienced that me - and all are willing to help.
br
Peter
PS : have some problems with my Internet connection , so I’m only able for sporadic logins to the forum 
thanks for the tips and thinking along
i’ll try them tonight when i get home.
something else ; i manually added some stuff to avast.ini and also ran the Mail Protection Wizard when using the previous version of Avast to have it scan mail for some client machines that use the server running Avast as a proxy (don’t have the file here, but stuff like ImapListen …)
could it be that this stuff is in the way of my IMAP connection now ?? one of the changes in 4.5 is that it scans in a different way (low level network filtering ?) , but i still see it ‘listening’ on the mail-ports (25,110,143) …
it looks as if Thunderbird now connects to the IMAP port (143) and then hangs.
would have thought that avast.ini would have been updated by 4.5, but … ??
hmm, may be that the old manual setting screw up now the way avast works. Don’t think that a update removes manual changes in the ini file.
Might be a good idea to back up the old ini file, deinstall avast completly, clean up all directories, clean up registry, and make a complete new fresh install with a new downloaded version.
May be You use the uninstall utility from Alwil:
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_uninstall_util.html
There should be no special settings necessary now, I have tried thunderbird about 1 week ago and no special settings were necessary, except the IMAP download changes in the js file as they were mentioned in the thread I have given You - btw Technical has in it’s signature a link to a perfect description of the ini file.
Good luck tonight
br
Peter
I really needed IMAP access, so I just completely uninstalled Avast and did a clean install …
IMAP is working now !!
What was blocking access seems to have been the ‘ImapListen=127.0.0.1:143’ in avast.ini which made Avast listen on port 143 … there is no such line in the new avast.ini and Avast now listens on port 12143 (?!)
Good to hear that is it working now ;D
I don’t know the internals of avast, but I think that has something to do with the new way avast works. They have to do some redirection and as they are not using the IP redirection any more they use a port redirection now. There are some threads in here about how it is working exactly.
Have You checked if the messages are realy scanned by avast - there sould be these lines in the header of your downloaded messages:
X-Antivirus: avast! (VPS 0450-1, 09.12.2004), Inbound message
X-Antivirus-Status: Clean
br
Peter
yep !
I flagged ‘Show detailed info’ and ‘Insert note’ and I can see Avast is scanning.
I’ll post the port 12143 info in the avast.ini thread.
port 12110 and 12025 are also in use by ashmaisv.exe.
I know I’m arriving a bit late to this party, but…
Upon switching directly from Norton AV 2003 to avast! 4.5 yesterday, I lost IMAP capabilities when using Pegasus (on Win XP) to connect with the SpamCop.net servers. As I’ve seen described in threads here, the connection would just hang, even if I paused or stopped all of the “providers.” So, I went looking for the “avast4.ini” file and didn’t find any mention of IMAP in it, so I added this:
[MailScanner]
ImapListen=127.0.0.1:144
ImapRedirectPort=144
That allowed Pegasus to connect to the IMAP host, but by telling avast! to listen on the wrong port, disabling any possible detection of nasty stuff. So, I went looking for a better solution, checking the SpamCop FAQ and both my Pegasus IMAP settings and the built-in Help. In the Security portion of the IMAP settings in Pegasus, there are three options for “use SSL/TLS security on this connection”:
Never
Via STARTTLS
Via Direct SSL connect
I have been using the second option, which was working before, but not once I installed avast!.
Here’s the link to some IMAP details about SpamCop.net:
http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/347.html
where you’ll see that ‘SpamCop IMAP server uses the “alternate port” technique for SSL access’ and so I removed the “[MailScanner]” section that I had added to “avast4.ini” and switched to using “Direct SSL connect” to SpamCop’s IMAP server on port 993. That worked, allowing SSL connections, but avast! was still “out of the loop” (it doesn’t support SSL IMAP connections, does it?).
So, finally, I simply turned the SSL attempts off, using the “Never” option, and now avast! is active when I perform IMAP transactions. (However, the SpamCop servers have antivirus appliances, so this is a bit silly, I suppose, unless something slips by their scanning and allows avast! to have a look.)
I’m posting this to document what I discovered, in case someone else who uses Pegasus comes along…there aren’t very many of us left, even though it’s a very good client, IMO.
Peace,
David T.