Issue with iTunes sharing

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I am running the free version of Avast 5.0.545. Previous to this, I was running McAfee Virusscan. With McAfee, I was able to run iTunes sharing successfully, which allowed me to share one computer’s music library across my home network.

I was unhappy with McAfee for a number of reasons, and am very much pleased with the way Avast is working. The problem I have is that ever since I installed Avast, I am unable to access any shared music libraries. The option is still checked in iTunes to share the library, as is the checkbox indicating iTunes should look for shared libraries, but none ever appear in iTunes to be shared.

I suspect that something in the Avast services is blocking the sharing feature, but I am not sure which one is responsible, nor, how to allow that traffic between the computers. Further, I am not sure if the problem is likely to be on the host side, the client side, or both. My Windows firewall settings are such that it looks like sharing should be permitted, and nothing that I am aware of has changed with those settings since the time sharing was working until now.

I have three XP Home computers, and one Windows 7 computer on my network, and at this time none of them see any shared libraries even though they are all set to share their libraries. All of them are able to access common network resources such as a network attached drive, and some of them have file shares that they access on other computers on my network, so I do not believe it is a problem with the network itself, IP address problem etc.

Any ideas on what I should look for? I have a suspicion that the problem may lie with the network shield service, but I don’t know for sure, nor do I know how I might go about fixing it to allow this traffic if it is the cause. I could try disabling it, but since I do not know specifically what it is doing for me, I am not sure if that is a good idea.

2

Well the free avast doesn’t block, but scans and alerts to infection and it doesn’t have a firewall so no blocking in that regard either.

Or http://majorgeeks.com/McAfee_Consumer_Product_Removal_Tool_d5420.html

2007 version - http://download.mcafee.com/products/licensed/cust_support_patches/MCPR.exe

Also see - How do I uninstall SecurityCenter? http://ts.mcafeehelp.com/faq3.asp?docid=71525

3

Thanks for the reply. I guess being a new user i did not realize that the free version does not block as I suspected it might be doing.

I do not believe this is related to any remnants of McAfee, especially since on the Windows 7 computer, that was never installed. Rather, the first and only virus product installed on that computer was Avast Free.

I suppose it could be a coincidence that all of a sudden the sharing is not working, and that it is unrelated to Avast, though I am at a loss to explain what the cause might be.

I think this weekend I will try uninstalling Avast (I assume it uninstalls cleanly) from two computers, and then see if the sharing works between the ones that do not have it installed. If it still does not work, then Avast would be cleared as the culprit. If it starts working at that point, then I might need some more help from an expert on this forum to figure out how Avast is getting in the way.

Thanks again.

4

I can only say what has happened in the past with remnants in general as they can cause a conflict, which to all intents looks like blocking.

I can’t say way it might happen on the win7 system (I don’t use win7) that hasn’t had McAfee installed.

Unfortunately it takes to to conflict and removing one may remove any conflict, but what it doesn’t do is, is identify the culprit. So my advice is still to run the McAfee uninstall tools for the systems which have had it installed.