I installed Avast! 5 free on my new laptop today and went over to eicar to see if everything was running ok. Apparently it isn’t. Avasts web shield is not intercepting eicars test files when they are downloaded with Firefox and Google Chrome. The are however being caught by the file shield and when using IE and Opera the web shield detects them no problem.
Is the a bug or just limitation of the program?
Thanks.
What OS are you running? Works fine for me at http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm for both Firefox and Chrome, as well as Opera and IE. Are you trying to download an SSL version? Avast! can’t see that until after your browser decrypts it. Do you have a proxy set up in IE?
Windows 7 64-bit. No proxy set up as of yet but I’m probably going to download Privoxy. No it was not the SSL version of the files.
In Firefox eicar is blocked by Avast! Web Shield.
Greetz, Red.
OK; I don’t have w7x64 to test it with, so will need to wait for someone who does. Did you try the download for all the non-SSL Eicar test versions? And the result was just nothing until it hit the File Shield? Do you have any add-ons for Firefox?
Tried to download them all. The file shield caught every one apart from the .txt files which wasn’t detected. There were no warning before the file shield popped up. Just installed privoxy to check and the web shield no longer detects the files when downloaded with Opera and IE.
Nothing comes to mind immediately, but you might check your Web Shield expert settings to make sure nothing has changed and all packers are selected. Just have not seen or experienced this before, so need to hunt for what in the configuration singles you out as the victim. What firewall and other security software are you using?
One other thought. Since this is a new laptop, did you have to uninstall a trial version of Norton? Did you use the custom Norton Uninstaller at http://service1.symantec.com/Support/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039 . Norton has been the source of a lot of strange behavior in a lot of other security programs.
The only changes I made where setting heuristics to high and PUP to ask. All packets are selected. The laptop came with a trial of mcafee but I removed it without ever launching it. I did install a trial of KIS 2010 before Avast but uninstalled it as I felt it slowed my browsers. I ran ccleaner after both uninstalls.
See http://uninstallers.blogspot.com/ and use the appropriate uninstallers for both McAfee and Kaspersky. If that doesn’t do it, you should also use the removal tool for Avast! 5 and reinstall it. The residual of previous security software is a very common cause of mysterious problems for later installations because of the residue of the standard Windows “Add or Remove” which is what CCleaner invokes. A good general purpose uninstaller is Revo Uninstaller, but the security software you mention has specific in depth uninstallers supplied by the vendors. They don’t believe in “add/remove” either. 
Finally fixed it. Had to run the McAfee uninstaller and then uninstall and reinstall Firefox and chrome. Thanks for the help! 
Glad it worked for you. ;D Many security companies sure make it hard to uninstall their stuff and switch to something else- usually with the excuse that it keeps malware from attacking them. One well known product actually installs some stuff by elevating their privileges to “system” (which is above you, the lowly admin, and difficult to invoke) and leaves it behind when they uninstall in the form of things like “legacy” registry keys. Post in a new thread if you have other questions or issues.