I can’t say if this is being caused by Avast, but over the last couple of months I can at least say that there is some correlation.
Symptoms:
Internet connection becomes unresponsive and eventually drops, with Windows showing a yellow exclamation mark in the system tray on the connection icon. The only way to restore the connection is to reboot the machine. Invariably, when the computer gets back into Windows there is a notification of an update to Avast. So, when I realised this was happening, I wanted to see what Avast was up to at the time the connection dropped. Sure enough, whenever my internet problem happened, Avast was also unresponsive and I couldn’t open the user interface. Further anecdotal evidence is that my Avast updates about 3 times a day, the same number of times this connection issue happens.
I have disabled auto update in favour of doing it manually whenever I remember, and I haven’t had my connection loss since then. I don’t know what other information I can give to make this clearer. I found this in the Event Log after the last instance of the problem, but it isn’t very informative. Only really gives another clue that it is related to Avast’s updates.
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The description for Event ID 0 from source gupdate cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.
If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.
The following information was included with the event:
Service stopped
Is there anything else I can do to shed some light on this?
avast should only scan and does not change anything with Internet connection.
Which is your firewall? Any other program that could interfere? Are you sure the problem is not from your ISP?
I only use the Windows Firewall and Avast. I’m sure the problem is not from my ISP because my modem still shows the connection as active. I’m fairly sure this is a software problem. As I said, I don’t know if this is caused directly by Avast but there is a very strong correlation between Avast’s auto updates and instances of the problem. Furthermore, the problem has not repeated since I disabled the auto update.
Is your computer clean (not infected)?
The fact the modem is on is not an indication that everything is ok… Maybe the DNS server of the connection (from your ISP) is down… What do you see in the system tray icon for the network? What’s the error message from that icon?
Thanks for the replies but I guess I’ll have to find someone else to blame The problem has just started happening again despite having disabled my Avast auto updates. Oh well back to the drawing board. Feel free to delete the thread since it is misleading.
Ok since the thread will remain I might as well share the solution to my problem in case some googler comes across it. I use ICS to share my connection with my GF’s laptop and for some reason the service ‘IP Helper’ was disabled. Enabling this seems to have fixed the problem (which was also occuring on the laptop).
Thanks again for the replies and thanks for the superb anti virus software.