web shield stops web browsing[SOLVED]

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hi all,
We’ve come across a problem with the free avast version I haven’t had this issue with the professional and it’s particularly with these certain laptops.

We’ve installed Avast! Free edition on some Dell laptops the exact models are:

Dell Latitude C400

They have Windows XP Pro - 32 Bit installed

We made clones of the original and distributem to the laptops they all seemed to at first work internet was fine for the first week and we left it for the weekend. After the weekend on Tuesday when a volunteer came back to check on them the internet no longer worked i.e. web browsing everything else about internet could work:

  • Avast updated
  • E-mail clients
  • Pinging external addresses

Even using a ubuntu live cd and the browser worked fine. The volunteer mentioned something to me about someone also having an issue with Avast one time and it crashed their Windows XP Pro also I told him to disable the Web Shield and that seemed to resolve the problem. We did try un-installing and re-installing too before we do this, to no avail unfortunately.

While avast is working and up and running having no web protection seems quite risky what I would like to know if:

  • Removing the web shield are there going to be problems with protection while users browse the internet?
  • Are there any known issues of resolving this bug or patches that I should be aware of?

If anyone could let me know regarding this I would greatly appreciate it, thanks.

2

Do you use these laptops at home?

3

No, they’ve been in the office the entire time, they have never left the office. We thought it could’ve been a bad install of Avast but that’s not the case re-install still had the same issue.

4

I just have two questions, how where the computers imaged?

How did you “re-install”?

5

  1. We use a hardware called imagemaster, it certified wipes data along with cloning hard drives. We used an IQ copy to copy the image over.

  2. Removing the program from add & remove programs, downloading a fresh copy off of avast, installed again.

6

So, the “imagemaster” something like this, right? http://toys4techies.com/product_info.php?products_id=91&osCsid=0360c213420ed585e50f0f8a74268ad9

Did you sysprep the machines before doing a clone? There’s some info about prepping a machine with avast before imaging here: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=45576.0

Also, to make sure that avast is completely removed, you should use the standard add/remove programs, then use the avast uninstall utility http://www.avast.com/uninstall-utility

7

Yes, that’s the image master we use a very…expensive and annoying peace of hardware…lol. Were still looking for a machine that’s cheaper that does certified wiping/cloning.

I was just talking to my co-worker regarding sysprep, Dell use a special liscense with the OEM so there is no need to sysprep the machines. We do syspreps on WDS installs on our client servers but didn’t think we needed too for image master also it seems that’s not the case.

I will try to completely remove Avast with that tool, can you tell me what major dissadvantages there are if any without the web shield being on?

8

Well, most of us use software to clone machines these days (well, I do anyway).

A combination of virtual machines or actual hardware to create reference machines, and software like MDT 2010 / Ghost / or the opensource FOG to distribute images.

I guess you’re using Dell’s ImageDirect service if they already have your image on them?

I’m still confused though, you get the machines from Dell, you take them, start them up, install Avast, then take the drives out and image them with your hardware imaging thingamajig?

Or how does that process work? Any time you start the computer for the first time and add software, you need to sysprep again before taking an image of it. Otherwise you’ll have duplicate SID’s, and multiple machines with the same name (including avast). I know you said that you were putting the free edition on, so it’s not like ADNM is getting confused by having several machines with the same name, but something is obviously going wrong somewhere.

Is there any reason that you’re not using ADNM to push out version 4.8 to the machines after they have been imaged (you shouldn’t be using the free edition in a business, especially one that’s big enough to afford to use Dell ImageDirect).

Like I said, you should sysprep after the avast install, and avast even comes with a tool that you should run as well before imaging, as explained in my previous post.

As for the major disadvantages without the web shield, well, anytime you disable a part of the antivirus it weakens the protection. Something that the webshield could have prevented from getting on the system will have to be caught by one of the other scanners. They “should” do the job, but what happens if they don’t catch it in time and starts messing with the machine before the other scanners get a chance to prevent it?

It’s simple, if you want the best protection that you can from any A/V program, you should have all of the program running.

9

These laptops won’t be for our business though, we refurbish old laptops/computers and sell them to the community so that they can have something that’s affordable, effective and easy to use.

We don’t get the machines from Dell they are old Dell machines we never buy anything new, we get donations of machines/laptops sometimes in bulk, we use our own free software we recommend on them i.e. Firefox for web browsing foxit reader or adobe reader for pdf viewing, thunderbird for e-mails, open office for documents and either AVG or Avast for anti-virus. We then make the master image and then clone them onto the other machines we got donated on. Saving us time and effort of doing it for all.

We’ve done this for every other bulk machines we’ve got in using Image master, we’ve never had a problem with Avast not starting up the web shield on any of our models at all until we got these laptops. Something about these laptops doesn’t seem to like our regular image writing it seems when using avast.

If it’s the case of needing to do sysprep then so be it, we’ll try that out and hopefully that works with the image master. I undersand about the web protection thing but if the re-install tool doesn’t really work and it has to be sold that way I think it could be alright. I will do my best to try and make sure that it’s on though, thanks for your help and insight on cloning I will keep that open minded in the future.

edit

I’ve just made a very stupid mistake, the hardware manager told me we never installed Avast on the computers we only left the install on them which is why the clones never had a problem, I’m sorry that I bothered you all this time with this problem and I’ve made quite a fool of myself haha, well newbie title is right.

I’ll un-install the anti-virus on the computers using that tool, thanks alot.

10

Gotcha, your last post explained what you were doing a lot better. LOL, hey everyone makes mistakes and it’s not a problem. I’m just glad you got everything straight.

Your organization seems to be doing a good service to the community, nice job and I hope that works out for you all!

Well, if you have anymore questions / problems, let us know and we’ll be glad to help! :slight_smile: