I installed avast4 yesterday and am beginning to wonder if it was a good idea. Boot up (after the scan) is SLOW; I’ll worry about that later.
But my main problem is loss of abiltiy to connect to my email server. I am on Windows XP and Outlook Express. Help says Mail Protection Wizard should handle this automatically. It also says Start-All Programs-Awast-Mail Protection Wizard to see the settings. I do NOT have “Mail Protection Wizard” come up and cannot find them anywhere. I would really like to read my email.
Help ASAP, please.
If you read the help again, you will see it says: “The mail protection wizzard is only for 9x / ME systems”.
And: “On NT based systems the mail scanning is done transparantly”.
You only have to setup the mail as if Avast isn’t there and Avast will automaticly take care of the rest, unless you have a unusual setup of the mail. (eg if you need to change the setup to get a spamfilter working)
OK, so no way to find my settings. I changed nothing in my previously perfect mail program after installing avast. My server simply (and repeatedly) gives me an error message and no mail.
What is the exact error?
Does your mail account requires ssl?
Did you setup the rules for Avast in your firewall?
What other mail and/or security related software do you have installed?
etc etc.
Thanks for trying to help.
After my last message, I closed everything down, disconnected, stopped avast on-access protection, reconnected and got my email as usual. The problem is obviously connected to avast, though I may have done something wrong or failed to do something necessary.
I don’t know about ssl.
I don’t remember an opportunity to set up avast firewall rules.
The problem is the same with Zonealarm on or off; the only other automatic program I have is Spybot.
Jima, is the error you are getting something like the one described here: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=10966.0 ? In particular, are you getting a message says something along the lines of “Use real server address instead of 127.0.0.1” ?
No, it doesn’t mention “real server address.” It does say it can’t connect to SMTP with a number. It does say Port 25, Secure (SSL). It always says an unknown error has occurred and error number 0x800CCC67 (don’t know if that changes).
I think it is some simple item of configuration or a code that needs to be allowed, i.e. my server is not recognizing avast.
It behaves sort of like Greenknights problem. Maybe you can get two for the price of one. Thanks again.
Is your firewall allowing permission to access the internet to ashMaiSv.exe? If not allow it otherwise you won’t be able to connect to check email using avast’s mail protection.
The tech adviser at my ISP said maybe avast and Zonealarm were not getting along, so when avast gave me a choice, I shut ZA off where it remains, so no active firewall when the problem occurs.
How do I find if ashMaiSv.exe is allowed?
Well, I would have thought that with the firewall disabled it would be ok (that should be the same as allowing ashMaiSv.exe access. Now that you have tried it without the firewall enabled, I wouldn’t recommend leaving it like that for any longer.
Try a forum search for 0x800CCC67 this I’m sure has cropped up before, that may provide more information.
Have you tried an avast repair? Add Remove programs, avast! Anti-Virus, Change/Remove button and scroll down to Repair, click next and follow. You need to be on-line to do this.
You could also try uninstall ZA, reboot, install and see if it will recognide avast’s processes.
The 0x800CCC67 search had 3 hits (including your reply :)); neither of the others seemed to have been resolved, but were essentially the same as mine.
As I said in my first post, I’m beginning to wonder if this was a good idea, especially if I need avast repair within 24 hours of installation.
As you say, I’d like to get ZA on again, since it doesn’t seem to be the cause.
If turning off on-access protection hadn’t given me back my email, I would really be angry.
I said try a repair as a first step (the lessor option), there are few AVs that even have this option which is very handy. A file can become corrupted for many reasons, the repair can ofter resolve this without uninstall, boot, install.
Have you tried the options I gave, avast repair, ZA uninstall, boot, install? If all else fails uninstall avast, boot, install.
Jima,
In Outlook Express. Have you gone to Tools>Accounts>then in the Accounts box click on the mail tab>then click on the properties tab>servers tab>then down in the lower left hand corner you should see “Outgoing Mail Server”>under that make sure that
“My server requires Authentication” is checked. Alot of ISP services require this to be checked so outgoing mail will be sent.
Only check this option if it’s required by your ISP otherwise you’ll just open another can of worms.
I am a little red in the face, but feeling more upbeat about avast. I didn’t get to the computer until later than usual today. I had left Zonealarm off when closing, but it came back with reboot. Avast also gave a prompt I never saw yesterday, asking for access to email protection program. Allowing it let my email open as it should. 
I hope it stays that way,
It looks like there is lots to learn about avast!, but now I am looking forward to it instead of dreading it.
Thanks for everyone’s input.
Jima
Avast also gave a prompt I never saw yesterday, asking for access to email protection program.That prompt came from ZA asking you if it was ok for the avast mailscanner to access the internet.