Mail Scanner Gone Crazy!

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hi’a guys,

I’ve been running avast! on my system for ages now, and I totally love it. This is the first problem I’ve had with it. The mail scanner icon is constantly appearing in my notification area, even when I am not running Outlook Express (my default mail client). After the icon appears, in a little while it comes up with this message…

'Internet connection timeout elapsed. Continue waiting? (msnmsgr.exe → (my mail server)

Once I see this, I click on the ‘No’ button. The icon dissapears only to rear its head again in a little while. If I double click on the main avast! icon in the notification area, and highlight the ‘Outlook/Exchange’ module in the left panel, it gives the message ‘The provider is waiting for a subsystem to start’. Any ideas guys?

I’m running XP Home sp2. My version of avast! is home, and is the latest one.

Cheers,

Me :slight_smile:

2

I think you must be on the same ISP as me :slight_smile:

Recently I have had a whole spate of the timeout messages. I am fairly certain that they have nothing to do with avast and a lot more to do with genuine timeouts.

And, Outlook Exchange provider is intended for Outlook/Exchange which is an entirely different product from Outlook Express. We all get Outlook Express as part of the Windows Internet Explorer product. Outlook is part of the Microsoft Office product for which Microsoft charges lots of your currency units. The Outlook/Exchange provider is a plugin which works with that product.

3

Are you using MSN Toolbar?

As reported a lot of times, the message “The provider is waiting on the subsystem to start” will be shown there until you open MS Outlook.
The plugin will be enabled automatically after that.
Check if the avast plugin is not disabled into MS Outlook:
Outlook 2003 > Help > About > Disabled items
Outlook 2000 > Tools menu > Options > Other > Advanced Options > Add-In Manager

4

Regarding Outlook/Exchange provider, it’s exactly as alanrf already explained above. If you don’t use MS Outlook and you just use Outlook Express (two completely different products), simply TERMINATE Outlook/Exchange provider inside avast! On-Access Scanner list. All you need to protect your Outlook Express (incoming and outgoing mails) is Internet Mail provider.

Also… click on CUSTOMIZE… inside your Internet Mail provider, and then chose ADVANCED tab. See screenshot:

http://img454.imageshack.us/img454/7347/untitled15lc.jpg

Increase the TIMEOUT FOR INTERNET COMMUNICATION(s) value to some higher number, like 300, 400 or even 500

You have to do the same thing in your Outlook Express as well. Open TOOLS / ACCOUNTS and then select your e-mail account (if you have more than one, do the same with each one of your accounts). So, select it, and chose PROPERTIES on the right side. When new window is open, click on ADVANCED tab. In the middle of the newly opened window, you’ll see SERVER TIMEOUTS option. Set it to let’s say, 3 minutes… repeat that for each account you have and you should be ok. See screenshot, I prepared it for you for easier navigating. :wink:

http://img482.imageshack.us/img482/507/untitled20ym.jpg

Regards,
Sasha

EDIT: Tech he doesn’t use MS OUTLOOK, he uses Outlook Express, he can freely terminate OUTLOOK/EXCHANGE provider he doesn’t need it…

See here:

Acoustics4me wrote:

...The mail scanner icon is constantly appearing in my notification area, even when I am not running Outlook Express (my default mail client)...
5

I must read more carefully, as Tech notes msnmsgr.exe is Microsoft Messenger, though I 'm not sure why it would be showing a timed out connection to the user’s mail server.

Since the user has Outlook Express as the default client they may not have Outllook 2003 installed on the system to do any checks with.

6

Maybe because MSN messenger is notifying you about received e-mails in your Hotmail mailbox.

7

You mean MSN Messenger sends you emails to tell you that you have emails?

I’m glad I don’t use that product.

8

Of course it does that, why not ? If you are annoyed by it, you can simply disable that feature inside MSN messenger options. As simple as that… you just have to go through those options more carefully. :wink:

By the way, my MSN messnger doesn’t alarm me, because I disabled it. I have my mail notification (spam killer) program that does that.

Edit: Btw, it doesn’t send you e-mails, it gives you nice little pop up window just like avast! gives you when VPS is being updated.

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Edit: Btw, it doesn't send you e-mails, it gives you nice little pop up window just like avast! gives you when VPS is being updated.

Sasha,

while I was being flippant in my last response, it comes back the question I posed before. Is it not unusual that MSN Messenger would be maintaining a connection to the user’s mail server so long that it would time out?

It certainly would not be a connection to Hotmail that avast would be intercepting since Hotmail does not support POP3 or SMTP connections.

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Well I don’t know about others, but I have my HOTMAIL account for more than 12 years now, and as a long time Hotmail user, I’ve got free access to my Hotmail account through Outlook Express. I receive all my Hotmail e-mails through OE. I know it’s using HTTP server, but still it’s going through OE, so maybe it has something to do with Internet Mail provider (I mean those internet connection timeouts) after all… I am not sure. Maybe if someone from Alwil clarifies that for us, it would be great…

http://img454.imageshack.us/img454/7293/untitled94sl.jpg

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I too can access Hotmail through OE, but that access is via WebDav (also known as HTTPDav), which is, as its name suggests a form of HTTP and is not intercepted/monitored by the Internet Mail scanner. At least that is true unless there is an unadvertised change made in 731.

12

Wow, what a fantastic response! I’ve never had such a good response from a message board…lol

Ok, now I don’t want to miss anyone out, so here goes…

Alanrf - I understand Microsofts Outlook and Outlook Express are completely different. But with the way it is worded ‘Outlook/Exchange’ I thought it meant it would cover ‘Outlook Express/Microsoft Outlook’. My mistake there. I don’t use MSOutlook. Thanks for the clarity over that. Now I thought msnmsgr.exe was MSN Messenger, and msmsgs.exe was Windows Messenger? I can’t figure out either why there is reference to msnmsgr in the error message? But what I do know is apart from the latest avast! update, I have pretty much the same configuration with all my other programmes, so I’m at a loss to why avast! has suddenly thrown a hissy fit? As far as Msn Messenger sending me emails to let me know I have emails…nope. It doesn’t send me emails. It sends me an alert (a little pop up window) which is very low key, and only happens if you’re logged into Msn at the time. Not an annoyance at all. Also I don’t have a Hotmail account (spam city!)…lol. Ok, I think I’ve covered everything you’ve mentioned Alanrf. Thanks for that buddy :slight_smile:

Tech - No, I’m not using Msn Toolbar, or any other toolbar for that matter. I currently don’t have MS Outlook installed (xp meltdown, reformatted, haven’t loaded Office on yet), but will keep in mind what you’ve said for the future. Thanks buddy :slight_smile:

S.Z. Craftec - Ahhhh, a cybie after my own heart…screen shots! Aren’t they wonderful. Ok, I terminated the Outlook/Exchange module. You know, I’ve just clicked why I may be getting the time out message. Because I haven’t yet loaded Office onto my pc, and therefore don’t have MS Outlook installed, that Outlook/Exchange module is in permanent work mode waiting for the programme it is meant to be watching out for! Duh, me!..lol. I changed my timeout time to 500 like you suggested. As a default, I always change that in the Outlook Express configurations, so that’s already set. That was some good info…thanks Tech…Cheers… :slight_smile: Oh, I forgot to say, I can also access a hotmail account through OE (have done in the past - reluctantly) but don’t have a hotmail account now.

Ok, I think I’ve covered everything. Cos I hate to miss people out when they’ve taken the time to help me. Oh, one more development, avast! is starting to come up with dialog boxes that tell me ‘avast! needs to restart your pc now’ (not word for word, but the basic message). I wonder if that will stop now that I’ve terminated the Outlook/Exchange module. Will let you all know.

Thanks again guys…so much appreciated :wink:

Michaela

p.s. Oh hey, Craftec, what did you use to get those fancy arrows, and numbers on your screen shots? I only use Corel PP to draw arrows on screen shots, and insert text if I need to…but yours are so much fancier…!..lol. Do tell…

13

Michaela,

welcome to the avast forum. As you see we are a bit of a chatty bunch here yacking away to each other.

First let me return to your original post.

I guess from your response that you are a user of MSN Messenger and it would appear that you have told MSN Messenger to monitor a regular POP3 email account of yours (not a Hotmail account) and to give you a pop-up advisory when new mail arrives in that account.

In order for it to do that MSN must behave a bit like a regular mail client and contact your email account periodically to see if there are any new messages. The only way it can do that is to connect to your mail server and use the same POP3 requests that a mail client would make to get a list of the messages on the server.

Since it is behaving just like an email client its actions will be intercepted by the avast Internet Mail provider, just as it would for any other mail client. I suspect that you have hit a patch when your email server is taking a long time to respond to MSN and that avast is simply generating the timeout message. I assume that there have not been any recent changes in the way you need to access this email account that you need to tell MSN Messenger about.

Since you have increased your timeout per Sasha’s excellent graphics let’s hope that you will not see too many of the timeout alerts in future. And no, it had nothing to do with the Outlook/Exchange provider sitting there with nothing to do - the timeout has nothing to do with that provider.

Meanwhile onto the next issue you have reported.

I am always suspicious of the kind of messages you are seeing requesting a restart of your system, particularly one that appears persistent. It may be a perfectly innocent request from avast, but it is not one with which I am familiar.

I hope that someone with more information on that message in avast will step in with an explanation.

14

Hey’a alanrf,

Yes, I am a user of MSN. I only mentioned the hotmail account cos someone else mentioned it (I think…lol). Thanks for the explaination about msn acting as an email client…I get that. Just hadn’t thought about it before. The only timeout I increased was the avast! time out (as per Sasha’s advice). I had already set my OE for the longest timeout. Ok, I understand about outlook/exchange module now…thanks.

The request for rebooting has not appeared since I terminated the Outlook/Exchange module. So that’s a good sign eh.

Thanks you…

Me (part of the ‘Chatty Bunch’ - not to be confused with the 'Brady Bunch :wink: )…lol