[b]Edit: the update has now been oficially released (as 4.6.623). Please disregard the message below; instead, simply update to the latest version by invoking the Program Update command from within the avast GUI.[/b]
Hi guys, here comes a pre-release version (4.6.618) of the upoming avast Home/Pro 4.6 update - hopefully solving most of the issues found in the official 4.6 release (4.6.603).
WebShield now terminating abruptly ended connections
McAfee firewall related issues
and other.
Please feel free to post your respective comments about this release either here or by starting a new thread in this forum category (the “Beta” subcategory is still locked and will be deleted shortly).
We expect the update to be officially released in less than a week.
i am still having problems logging into Yahoo Mail even w/ the new beta update. I was using the localhost 12080 work around previously w/ ZA Pro 5.5.062.011. Yahoo Mail is the only site that doesn’t accept my cookes with both Firefox 1.0.1 and IE even w/ medium settings on cookie control and ad blocking on ZA. i can log into Yahoo Mail just fine if i turn off Web Shield. I have WinXP SP2 w/ all the updates. i do not have proxies configured w/ either Firefox or IE. ZA is allowing all the avast modules.
any ideas to what seems to be the problem now? thanks.
i like the idea of Web Shield, but it’s not worth it to me if these problems continue.
With pre-release version (4.6.612) installed the Web shield does not appear to be working on my system.
Although the Blue bal in the system tray area is spinning during browsing the last scan field and the scan counting field in the Web Shield area remain empty.
I also noticed that my firewall (Outpost 2.5 Pro) is now reporting that a number of applications previously accessing the net trough Web Shield no are asking direct http access.
After experiencing this I did a clean install of 4.6.603 and everything was back to normal, installing 612 and the above situation was back again.
Hmm, what are your proxy settings in IE (for example). What port does this Ad Muncher use? Due to increasing number of conflicts with all kinds of proxy software, avast’s webshield will now support only verified apps. In your situation this might mean you’ll have to configure avast to scan the communication between ad muncher and the browser – to help you further I’ll have to know the proxy configuration you are using.
There is no Proxy configured in IE (or Opera) just configured for direct access.
ad Muncher is using ports in the 1101-1115 range (that is what is configured now in Outpost)
Edit. I disabled ad Muncher and Web Shield is working again. No I need to find out how to be able to use my favorite ad blocker in combination with Avast
Technical, until this beta release, all apps were filtered (scanned) except those which were known to cause problems and these apps were excluded from the scanning. It seemed to us, that this approach would be the best. Anyway, as it turns out, there are plenty of apps using HTTP port, and these are often hard to configure with webshield. It may require some configuration tweaking and if this conflicting app is your firewall or your proxy through which you access the internet – you might end up with the internet cut off and angry :-[ . So we’ve decided that we might try the opposite approach. That is, only apps which are know to us not to cause problems with webshield (or known to the user and configured in the avast4.ini) would be filtered and scanned - namely the browsers are known to work correctly.
This behavior can be still switched to the previous – scan all – setting, but this must be the act of a knowledgable user.
I’m using the beta (4.6.614) but I see no difference in mine avast4.ini file (section WebScanner).
It seems that I must ‘exclude’ the applications and not ‘validate’ them :
Kantjer, indeed cooperation with avast and Ad-Muncher is a little bit more complicated, as ad-muncher does not use the traditional proxy-in-the-browser approach, it intercept the connection automatically as they leave your browser. I have several work arounds for you.
simply allowing WebShield to filter admunch.exe will do the trick. You may edit the avast4.ini file and in the [WebScanner] section add or edit the key OptinProces to include the admunch.exe process name.
E.g.
[WebScanner]
OptinProcess=admunch.exe
But I must warn you, I have seen pages that don’t load correctly with this setup. Not to mention these don’t not load correctly with ad-munch and without WebShield - but with WebShield things are behaving a little bit differently. ( try http://www.zive.cz/default.asp)
you may follow the ad-munch help instruction and enable ad-munch filtering for the ashwebsv.exe process. More info in the ad-munch help files. But basically, first step is to allow the connection to reach webshield - they are stopped (redirected) by ad-muncher by default. This can be done by excluding your browsers from ad-muncher (add -iexplore:* and -opera:* in the options/filter target ad-munch configuration page.
This will enable webshield, but ad-muncher will be disabled. You’ll want to enable ad-munch for the ashwebsv.exe (WebShield) process. This can be done by adding the +ashwebsv:* string into the ad-munch config page, but firstly you’ll have to download wsock32.dll from them (as said before, more info in their help files).
To sum up, here we have to colliding apps, WebShield and Ad-Muncher. I’ll definitely try to identify the problem and when all problems will be sorted out, the solution 1) would be the easiest choice, when there are really no problems with this ad blocker, avast may adopt the process name and filter it’s communication without any user intervention. In the mean time, you can configure ad-munch as described in the 2), or use the 1) option and see if any troubles will come up.
