Hi,
Posted this in support but haven’t gotten any answer.
After installing Avast free antivirus and enabling the 20 days Premium try out I started
getting DNS problems and couldn’t connect to my wifi anymore.
I got all these 1014 Event IDs, especially connected with mailshell:
Name resolution for the name sc21.rules.mailshell.net timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded.
Name resolution for the name sc17.rules.mailshell.net timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded.
Name resolution for the name sn3.mailshell.net timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded.
But also from Avast:
Name resolution for the name su.ff.avast.com timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded.
Now, after uninstalling Avast Antivirus, the problem was gone. NO DNS queries or connection issues.
Event ID 1014 is a DNS problem.
mailshell is a service from Clearswift that supplies a secure email gateway.
It is use by (but not limited to) Kaspersky, ESET, AVG, Spophos.
Yes, thank you, I get that, the problem with DNS errors and my wifi not working disappeared when I uninstalled Avast.
I have IPv6 enabled, but no DNS problems anymore. So it seems like this is originating from the Avast program
and those DNS queries to Mailshell maybe comes from the Avast application.
Thank you, I’ve installed the free version of Avast again and I’ve had no problems yet
But it was when I activated the premium try out features, the problems with DNS ocurred.
Would still like to know if these DNS queries to mailshell.net comes from the Avast application.
It is hard to tell if it was one of the extra’s in the premium version that caused the problem without having the log file(s) and/or support package.
It can be that one of them was.
But saying that, it can have been a glitch that happened when upgrading to the premium (trial) version.
A repair could have solved it as well as a clean installation of the premium version.
At least the problem does not exist now.
If you want to try the premium (or another paid version), I suggest to perform a clean installation.
It happens a lot that a update is causing problems.
About the mailshell.net DNS requests I can tell that I did a system restore to
the point where I had the full premium package (trial) installed.
Then I ran a network packet analyzer and by inactivating and activating Avast
protection I was able to see that all those requests like these came from The Avast program:
For the record, I rarely ever have a reason to come to this forum but over the last few weeks I’ve been having the same problem reported by the OP and others.
Network connections suddenly stop working.
Play with wi-fi settings, wire up to cat5, check the router, reboot, etc.
Usually “for some reason” Skype continues to work.
Disable Avast and everything works again.
I think Skype works because they use IP addresses and don’t go through DNS.
I don’t know what the pattern is. I’m runnning Windows 8.1 with the very latest Avast freeware. I have another Win7 system that never seems to have this issue, and on this 8.1 system it happens frequently enough to be annoying but I don’t know what the trigger is. I’d be happy if I got a warning from Avast that it detected a DNS issue and thus shutdown DNS access, but there’s nothing to indicate this is the case.
I’ve seen other people report this over the last 2-3 years and there never seems to be a resolution. I was one step away from buying an external NIC for my laptop when I realized what the problem might be. And here we are. Looking forward to seeing this resolved.
