Mail protection doesn't work

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hi,

I have uninstall avg and installed the avast home on my winXP SP 2.

I tried to send and receive from Outlook Express and Pegasus, but it seemed the avast didn’t scan my outgoing or incoming email, cause I have checked the email header and it doesn’t contain the avast. I have setup up the avast to insert note both for smtp or pop. How to solve this problem.

Thanks,
UD

2

Are you sure you proper uninstalled (and not only disabled) AVG?
Do you use any other antivirus in your computer (like ClamWin or any with email plugins)?

Do you use a firewall? Is ashmaisv.exe allowed to connect?
Are your avast Internet Mail provider settings ok?

To see if avast! is scanning emails, check one of these points:

  1. Is the avast icon (the special one of email scanning) be shown in the system tray?
  2. Is your email header with the lines X-Antivirus: avast! (VPS 0XXX-X, XX/XX/2005), Inbound message and X-Antivirus-Status: Clean? (Right click the message, choose Properties and Details). After you check your settings, as they’re not there now.
  3. Are clean notes added at the bottom of the email? (Internet Mail provider settings). The same as above…

[b]You can test the security of your email system here: http://www.gfi.com/emailsecuritytest/[/b]

3

Hello

Are you using plugins for the mail clients?

4

Are you sure you proper uninstalled (and not only disabled) AVG?
Yes, I’m very sure I have uninstalled it.

Do you use any other antivirus in your computer (like ClamWin or any with email plugins)?
No, no.

Do you use a firewall? Is ashmaisv.exe allowed to connect?
No firewall.

Are your avast Internet Mail provider settings ok?
Which one? what to setting up?

To see if avast! is scanning emails, check one of these points:

  1. Is the avast icon (the special one of email scanning) be shown in the system tray?
    Only an ‘a’ blue ball

  2. Is your email header with the lines X-Antivirus: avast! (VPS 0XXX-X, XX/XX/2005), Inbound message and X-Antivirus-Status: Clean? (Right click the message, choose Properties and Details). After you check your settings, as they’re not there now.
    Do not have that lines

  3. Are clean notes added at the bottom of the email? (Internet Mail provider settings). The same as above…
    No notes

[b]You can test the security of your email system here: http://www.gfi.com/emailsecuritytest/[/b]

Are you using plugins for the mail clients?
Not using plugins

Thanks and regards,
Rex

5

rexmale

is the mail account you are checking a simple POP3/SMTP account using port 110 for POP3 and port 25 for SMTP?

6

Yes, my email account uses port 110 and 25 only.

7

To better identify what may be happening it will probably be useful to create (for a while) a more detailed avast! log of your mail connections.

You can get the mailscanner to log your connections by editing the avast4.ini file (in Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA folder).

In the section headed:

[MailScanner]

add the line:

Log=20

and save the updated file.

The log will be in Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\log\ashmaisv.log

If you are then willing to share the log … please first obscure any personally identifiable information in it … we shall have a better chance of understanding if something is preventing avast from scanning your mail.

8

Hi,

Thanks for the responses, here I attached the log file (unedited).

I have installed the AVG again dan run the setup to uninstalled it, uninstalled avast dan reinstalled it, but still the Email protection doesn’t work for me.

Thanks and regards,
Rex

9

Rexmale, did you use ClamWin or any spam killer application?
Which firewall do you use?
If you go to Control Panel > Add/Remove programs > avast! antivirus > Remove. Then remove the ‘Outlook/Exchange’ plugin, will you Outlook Express work?

10

Hi,

I don’t use any firewall nor spam killer on my computer, but I have Windows Defender from Microsoft.

I have tried Control Panel → Add/Remove Programs → avast → Change → cross the Outlook/Exchange plugin, then restarted my computer. Tested send and receive email from Outlook Express, but I can not find the email header that tell me avast has scanned it, and the avast Internet Mail’s scanned count still 0.

Thanks and regards,
Rex

11

One thing I did not explicitly state … so forgive me I my question seems too obvious. Did the log you posted cover a period when you were receiving mail in Outlook Express?

The log certainly shows avast setting the intercepts but the log shows that no mail is actually intercepted. On the face of it it would seem that something else is preventing the avast intercepts from catching the POP3 requests from OE.

Did you use any other AV on this system other than AVG?

12

Yes, after I turned the log=20 on then I tried to send and get email from Outlook Express and Pegasus, and posted the log here.

No, I’m not using other AV except Windows Defender, I have tried to telnet 127.0.0.1 12025 and telnet 127.0.0.1 12110, both were successful connect to avast SMTP proxy and avast POP3 proxy.

Thanks and regards,
Rex

13

Thanks for the clarification.

Your telnet tests prove that the avast proxies are working properly, sadly it does not help us with the avast port 110 intercept not being able to catch the OE POP3 requests.

14

If the transparent redirect does not work, it may be due to an incompatible program.

  1. some LSP-type program (e.g. traffic accelerator)
  2. some conflicting program ignored by the redirect (see the log, e.g. avgemc.exe)
15

Hi,

I’m not use any traffic accelerator.
So how to solve the problem conflicting program?

Thanks and regards,
Rex

16

rexmale,

sorry to persist but I was wondering if you ever used, for example, Norton Antivirus on your system. It is notoriously difficult to remove and, once used, may haunt you yet.

Given that the transparent intercepts are not working for you then I will defer to the avast team on whether there are any readily available tools that can help troubleshoot.

One other option for you would be to set up your mail clients to go directly to the avast mail proxies.

My good friend Tech does a great job of advising Win98/ME users of how to set up mail client(s) so that they can use the avast mail proxies directly to intercept the mail.

Tech … over to you.

17

Hi Alanrf,

No, I haven’t used Norton Antivirus, only AVG.

Tech,
What is your solution?

Thanks and regards,
Rex

18

Well, …

If you have Windows 98\Me, the change of the login settings is normal while using avast. See http://forum.avast.com/index.php?action=display;board=2;threadid=7913;start=0#msg64228

With Win98 SE you should have:

pop3 server= smtp server = 127.0.0.1
username = mail.server.coml#user or mail.server.com#user@server.com
smtp authentication enabled and the username there = mail.server.coml#user or mail.server.com#user@server.com

But in this case, something should be wrong, something is conflicting…

19

My Windows version is XP Professional SP2

20

rexmale,

yes, you already said that use Windows XP SP2. However we have already established that something in your system is preventing the avast “transparent” intercept from working.

Nobody here has come up with any next steps to help you determine what that something is.

You wanted a workaround - I was proposing something like the settings used by Win98/ME users (for whom the “transparent” intercept is not possible).

So if and until someone steps up to help solve the problem with the inercept and if you want your POP3 mail scanned by avast here is what to do:

In your mail client:

Set the mail server as: localhost

Set the POP3 port as: 12110

Set the userid field: youruserid#your.real.mailserver

where, of course you will replace youruserid and your.real.mailserver with
the setttings for your real mail account.