After reading that it was not necessary to manually remove v4.8 before installing V5, and that the installation routine in V5 would both remove what was needed, and retain the registration details I installed V5 “over” the current version of 4.8.
Initially it all looked reasonably good. I decided to leave all of the shields running for the time being after I found that turning off P2P and IM which I don’t use resulted in a not secure status and icon display - 4.8 doesn’t have this problem.
I did a full scan and also a scan on bootup. At various times the PC was restarted (warm reboot), all without any drama. Finally I shut down the PC, had my dinner and then started it up again.
It stopped at the Windows XP screen prior to the log on dialogue appearing with the horizontal status indicator continuing to cycle endlessly. Several tries at rebooting gave the same result. I tried a boot to known last good configuration - same problem. Tried to boot into safe mode. It booted to a command line screen, but would not boot to the Windows GUI safe mode.
Was able to bring up MSConfig via C:\Windows\PCHealth\Helpctr\binaries and chose diagnostic startup. Again the reboot only brought up a command line screen. I was finally able to force uninstall of Avast 5 and the machine then rebooted correctly.
I have since restored the operating partition of the PC from an Acronis image made immediately before installing Avast 5, and so I am back using version 4.8.
Has anyone else experienced a similar problem on XP?. Incidentally There was no indication of any adverse interaction with Zone Alarm free firewall, and all functions from V5 that requested clearance through the firewall were given it.
If you don’t intend to use these Shields you should remove them, unlike 4.8 if you have a shield installed if it isn’t running this is going to remind you.
So using windows Add Remove programs, select ‘avast! Anti-Virus,’ click the Change/Remove button and scroll down to Change, uncheck the Shields you don’t use P2P and IM (the rest are essential I feel) and OK your way out. This completely removes those shields and no more unsecured notification. If you need them in the future all you need do is reverse that process, adding the shield/s that you need.
I stopped the Mail Shield because my email client and NNTP client don’t run scripts nor attachments. If an attachment is saved or viewed it is temporarily written to the TEMP folder where it is scanned by the File System Shield.
To get rid of the Avast! icon showing insecure, go to Settings and navigate to Status Bar and uncheck the Components Monitored. In my case the Mail Shield. Even on the Avast! Summary page, it is shown as Secured until “Show Details” indicates "Real Time Shields off.
I don’t know if Mail Shield is loaded into memory (probably), but it definitely isn’t running.
I think the most pressing point of the OP is the fact that after a boot scan he can’t log in to Windows anymore - and had to restore from an image.
Not whether he can disable/uninstall the IM and p2p shields (which you can turn off the notification in options, and still keep them installed if you need them)
Having restored the operating system partition and with the PC back running properly again, I have reinstalled V5 again. This time I first uninstalled V4.8 via Control panel\add and remove, removed all Avast permissions from Zone Alarm, rebooted, cleaned up with CCleaner, rebooted again and then installed another copy of V5 which I had downloaded “just in case” from the links on the avast site (the copy used previously was from the FileHippo site).
I opted for a custom install (only change from defaults being to not install either the P2P or IM shields) which has resolved the icon problem. After the installation was complete, I registered V5 and OK’d the entries for ZA relating to Avast.
I again did a manual scan, and also a scheduled scan on bootup. No problems were experienced and the PC has been shut down and restarted from cold several times without the problem reported previously showing up.
So at this stage it would appear that the first installation attempt was flawed for some reason. Perhaps I should have stuck with my normal policy of doing clean installs rather that opt for the quicker “over the top” method.
So all’s well that ends well, or what ever the saying is - V5 looks good to me at this stage.
The Mail Shield serves more purpose that simply that, if you happen to have an undetected/hidden trojan spambot (often hidden by rootkit), the Mail Shield could be your first indication that your system is sending out spam (scanning email when you aren’t sending any). So rather than remove it I would say Set its sensitivity to High.
That is treating the symptom rather than treating the disease, if you don’t use a Shield (P2P, IM) uninstalling it as outlined before, will certainly ensure it doesn’t use any resources and you don’t have to worry about monitoring something that isn’t installed.
Doesn’t the Mail Shield add text to the headers and/or text of any message it scans? I see where one can uncheck the additions to the Subject: header, but nothing else in Settings about what is added to a message. Also, antivirus programs can seriously interfere with some email clients. Any bot sending out spam would have to get past a software firewall, and that should alarm.
As far as the resources, I know that it will use a small amount when inactive but far less than if it were active. Since I will not be using the Mail Shield, I will probably remove it. However, for those that want to have it available, not monitoring is a reasonable workaround that the Alwil developers have provided.
It only adds the clean note to emails if you select that option and that is of by default.
Removing it is your decision, but it does serve an alternative purpose (perhaps not specifically designed for that) in being able to indirectly pick up on your system having an undetected/hidden trojan spambot present. For me that is more valuable than any small saving in resources, after all why buy all that RAM and powerful CPU if you aren’t going to use it.
But the only reason you are ‘not monitoring’ it is because you have switched it off otherwise avast would be alerting you that one of the shields is off. So if it isn’t off there is no need to worry about any workaround to shoot the messenger. If you are going to switch it off go the whole hog and get rid of it rather than get rid of the monitoring.
Also, the information added to outgoing messages by various antivirus/antispam programs have also been duplicated and added by spambots, making them meaningless to the recipients.
For now, I’ll leave Mail Shield disabled. I’ve installed Avast v4.8 on a few neighbors’ and relatives’ computers. As I read the threads here, I want to look at the settings so I can make some educated decision as to what to do with their setup when updating to v5 on the systems that can use it. They don’t all use the same email client.
I do appreciate your input, and perhaps our discussion will help others decide how they choose to set up Avast 5. It’s indeed a new beast, with so much configurability. 8)
Its called multi level approach to security, relying one thing alone means only one line of defence once broken.
That is your decision, but my advice is for those others that may well be considering what you are suggesting so that they have the facts to make their own informed decision.
