Webshield issue with Vista version of AVast Home

lukor · 2007-08-02T11:38:56.000Z

Hello Rej,

Thanks for the testing and for the logs. Unfortunately I am still trying to dig some gold out of them, without much luck though.

As you can see yourself, the timeline in the log goes pretty smoothly - no 3 seconds delays anywhere. We have only the per-second precision, this can be increased if needed, but currently I can say it seems to me there is no problem captured in the log.

The only gap I’ve found is between the connections. You can look it up by yourself. Search for the first occurrence of: 2007-7-31 16:29:48

You can see:

2007-7-31 16:29:48,Created
2007-7-31 16:29:48,connection 015D9368 of 5 (to clnt: 5) from 127.0.0.1:12080 to 127.0.0.1:49172
2007-7-31 16:29:48,Server: connection accepted.

This is the point where new connection is accepted by WebShield -that means WebShield was idle and waited in the accept( ) winsock call.

As you can see, the last line before this one is:
2007-7-31 16:29:45,Thread Main 11 is waiting, total 11, 10 threads waiting.

This means, all 10 threads are idle and have nothing to do (the 11th thread is reserved for other tasks, such as VPS updates etc.).

Even one line before, you can see that the same second the last non-idle thread finished it’s duties and became idle as well:
2007-7-31 16:29:45,Thread Main 4 is waiting, total 11, 9 threads waiting.

The 3 seconds gap is here, between the lines:
2007-7-31 16:29:45,Thread Main 11 is waiting, total 11, 10 threads waiting.

and

2007-7-31 16:29:48,Created

During the time WebShield is completely idle, doing nothing, just waiting for some connection to arrive.

Strange indeed.

Do you use any 3rd party firewall on Vista?
Have you tried to disable port redirection in WebShield - e.g. deleting the number “80” the the “Http redirected ports” line in WebShield config? Does this helps (yes I now, no your browser does not goes through WebShield, even though it is still running).
What happens when you enable HTTP proxy in the browser (still with Redirect disabled in WebShield) and configure it to be localhost, port 12080. Is the 3 seconds lag still there?

Thanks for now, hopefully we will find something.
Cheers,
Lukas.

system · 2007-08-02T17:49:50.000Z

Hi Luktor,

Sure thing, and ready to do more testing should you require it… I actually intend to do more to provide you with an easier way to find the delay. I’ll check into this today (2:00pm here so it must be late where you are… givine me plenty of time to work on this).

I’ll verify the steps you mentionned and let you know what I think.

As for the firewalls I use, I was using Zonealarm home edition until today … I woke up to find out it had crashed during the night (I do P2P) so I switched to a much more robust Comodo Firewall Pro on XP and will do the same on Vista.

If I notice any differences I’ll let you know.

I will also try the redirection of port 80, proxy and test those and report back to you asap

Thanks for your continued interest in this… hope we’ll find a solution to this eventually (gotta… since there is something going on… just well hidden from what I can see on machine that do NOT exhibit the symptoms.

In any case, I’ll be available as long as you require me to be in order to fix this and the download issue with WinXP (mentionned in a previous post in this thread).

Regards…

Rej

P.S. I noticed that the time stamps aren’t part of the *.dbg files I sent you… so I’m assuming they didn’t reveal anything either :-\

system · 2007-08-02T18:00:55.000Z

Hi Luktor,

I’m trying to find any logs from my Vista config that would contain the date/hours mentionned in your log and could not find any… I don’t remember touching vista after around 3:00PM ET canada time so I don’t know where I could have collected data that would show 17:xx time on the 31st .

Were you using one of my logs? if so, can you send it to me (I might have deleted it by mistake without realizing I’d need it again to check).

Both of my *dbg logs were for the 31st but they were done at around 12:30ish PM (not 17:30ish)

What I’ll do in the meantime is recheck the previous log I current have and see if I can’t find something relevant.

Cheers…

Rej

lukor · 2007-08-02T18:08:50.000Z

I am referring to the file AshWebSv.dbg (size: 3335090, modified 31/07/2007, 12:34:38), from your zip file AshWebSv-Vista.zip (size: 186623), line: 2432.

Lukas

system · 2007-08-02T18:25:56.000Z

Hello again,

so i think i have a solution. I don´t use a firewall. I have Zone Labs. I reinstall it. And than speed came out ;). I make some more test!

system · 2007-08-02T18:31:10.000Z

wow thanks for the quick reply… I’ll check it out and report back.

btw, found the lines. was checking for 16:48, not 16:29:48 … my bad :

be back with some useful infos hopefully.

Rej

system · 2007-08-02T18:40:30.000Z

HI Luktor,

While I’m about to switch to Vista to replace ZoneAlarm to Comodo Pro (which will constitute another test at the same time), I’d like to refer you to this…

find those line in the log…

2007-7-31 16:34:1,Thread Main 10 is waiting, total 11, 10 threads waiting.
2007-7-31 16:34:4,Created

Notice the 3 seconds delay that seems to NOT come from Webshield btw. What’s interesting about this is that I didn’t do anything while this was happening (this part is when I’m loading the MSNBC.com page, so I’m just waiting for the page to complete loading.

So something is causing that 3 seconds delay. Something that (checking on the WinXP log) doesn’t happen under WinXP.

This is the WinXP part of the same log activity…

2007-7-31 16:17:33,Thread Main 5 is waiting, total 11, 10 threads waiting.
2007-7-31 16:17:33,Created

Slightly different but as you can see, 0 delay between the 2… so something is causing this delay… just not sure what it is…

I’m now switching to Vista to do an intense set of tests (including the ones you mentionned) and I’ll report back to you.

Cheers…

Rej

system · 2007-08-02T18:56:56.000Z

Hi Luktor,

← bonk bonk bonk (sound of my head hitting my desk)

Problem found by Connecter … congrats Connecter!

I removed Zonealarm completly (uninstalled it) and the speed issue is gone!!!

I had tested it before my disabling it only and the speed issue hadn’t changed so I assumed that it wan’t ZoneAlarm but now that I’ve uninstalled it and restarted my PC, speeds are the same as in WinXP so it looks like ZoneAlarm has some sort of bug with Vista that it doesn’t have with XP.

I’m sooooo sorry to have had you spend time on this when it wasn’t a WebShield issue at all. Truly Sorry about that Luktor.

I still wish to thank you and all your team for making us feel like our opinion matter and taking our suggestions seriously. This in my eye, makes a company and even though I was an Avast fan before, I’m even more so now with the kind of service I’m seeing – even for those that can’t afford the pro edition and use the Home/Free edition!

Congrats to you and all your team and I sincerely wish you (team/Alwil) a long and succesful life!

Regards,

Rej

P.S. I’ll go back to XP and check if the downloads are fixed now that I removed ZoneAlarm… I’ll let you know.

P.P.S. bah, Comodo Pro isn’t Vista ready yet (it’s really a great Firewall – first in many reviews as being the best, even better than the commercial ones out there… anyone can point me toward a good firewall other than ZoneAlarm? Thx in advance).

system · 2007-08-02T19:22:13.000Z

Hi Luktor,

Result of tests after reinstalling ZoneAlarm on Vista.

Unlike Connecter, my speed reverted back to the same as before (delays of 3 seconds on each handshake).

So I tried the tests you mentionned earlier.

Remove the redirect of port 80

— This removed all the delays… it’s as if I had terminated WebShield. All speeds normal.

I then tried to set the proxy to 127.0.0.1, port 12080

— This is a bit weirder… the Internet became sluggish, (even with no redirect of port 80). My speed tests were normal, but it takes me a very long time to connect to any pages. Seems similar but it’s not the same issue (if an issue at all).

btw, both tests above were done with ZoneAlarm reinstalled.

– I will remove zonealarm and try to find a better Firewall until Comodo becomes Vista ready.

Good news seems to be that WebShield isn’t to blame here although there does seems to be a conflict that doesn’t exist in WinXP – I’ll post that info on ZoneLabs forums but from my experience, it won’t get checked at for a good while. Their service isn’t anything like Alwil service… yours is way better

– Download tests on WinXP coming up soon to a computer screen near you…

Regards…

Rej

system · 2007-08-02T19:37:48.000Z

Jear! Great! Good that it work by your pc too.

Freeware firewalls which you can use with vista aren´t very often to find. When you found something good please wride down.

system · 2007-08-02T19:46:43.000Z

Hi Connecter,

Sure will For now I use the Vista Firewall since I’m very careful when i’m on vista (no p2p, just normal browsing to known sites).

But I’ll search for one and once I do find a good one, I’ll let you know.

Cheers,

Rej

system · 2007-08-02T19:51:32.000Z

hi Luktor,

Good news,

On Windows XP, the download freeze issue was fixed by replacing ZoneAlarm with Comodo Firewall Pro and I thought you’d like to hear the good news

Man, thinking on the last few days, I realize that if I had just removed ZA firsthand, we would have saved a lot of time for all of us. Something to remember for the next time I encounter similar issues.

Regards…

Rej

P.S. if you’re ever interested to perform additional tests, please feel free to let me know. As I said previously I have plenty of time on my hands and I’d be happy help in any way.

lukor · 2007-08-03T05:57:24.000Z

Rej, Connecter,

thank you guys for your testing efforts. We have already had a suspicion that Zone Alarm might be involved - in fact we are already testing this possibility and work around in the Q/A lab, but it’s always somewhat complicated to blame 3rd party product as a first step solution.

I am happy we have finally find the cause. Hopefully we will also find some work around, so that Zone Alarm users might continue using WebShield on Vista as well.

Regards,
Lukas.

Vlk · 2007-08-03T06:10:56.000Z

Oh well, here it goes again… :-[
A similar thing has happened about 3 years ago, we touched base with ZA developers but they were not very fond of the idea of fixing anything (to put it diplomatically). We even met them face to face at a conference - still no luck… (it almost gave us the impression that these guys don’t really give a s…t about the quality of their product) [I apologize for the language]

We can only hope that now, they’ll take the issue more seriously as avast’s install base has grown considerably.

Cheers
Vlk

Lisandro · 2007-08-03T13:34:47.000Z

My personal impression is that ZoneLab used to be a serious company. Not any more since last three or four years. When other free firewalls take their market (from Sygate to Kerio, from Comodo to PC Tools)… Since three years ZA has been vanished from my computers.

system · 2007-08-03T16:13:55.000Z

Hi Lukor, Vlk,

thank you guys for your testing efforts.

It was a pleasure Glad I could help even if it’s just a little.

We have already had a suspicion that Zone Alarm might be involved - in fact we are already testing this possibility and work around in the Q/A lab, but it’s always somewhat complicated to blame 3rd party product as a first step solution.

Aye, I can understand that. I just hope you guys are able to find a way ‘around’ it although I’d prefer if ZA would return to being what they used to be – As Tech mentionned in the post above, I agree that they ‘used to’ be a great company. Somehow, my feeling is they became more ‘corporate’ in the last few years and let go of their search for ‘quality’ and ‘effort’ to provide their users with the best product and service they could. And let’s not forget their buggy uninstaller. Everytime I used to uninstall ZA, I couldn’t reinstall it without having to manually delete the ZoneLabs Directory under System32. I still don’t know if they fixed it on WinXP (I now delete it automatically everytime I uninstall ZA).

Heck, until recently, I still had to download their new version to update my ZA to the latest version… talk about a prehistoric way of updating a product!!

All I can add to this about ZA is that your WebShield works perfectly so far on Windows XP with Comodo… no issues so far. Let’s not forget that I had the download freezes issue with ZA under WindowsXP. This isn’t an issue anymore. 8)

I am happy we have finally find the cause. Hopefully we will also find some work around, so that Zone Alarm users might continue using WebShield on Vista as well.

Aye, me too and I wish you good luck there… if you need someone to test this, let me know, I don’t mind reinstalling ZA to help test this.

similar thing has happened about 3 years ago, we touched base with ZA developers but they were not very fond of the idea of fixing anything (to put it diplomatically). We even met them face to face at a conference - still no luck… (it almost gave us the impression that these guys don’t really give a s…t about the quality of their product) [I apologize for the language]

No need to apologize… I hear ya and frankly, you’re not the only one as can be seen by the few who posted here in the last day. You made the effort the last time. I just hope they’ll listen now as, as you mentionned, AVast user base is considerable indeed! I hope it keeps growing too (Avast, not ZA). I also hope ZA will cooperate with you guys. Good luck btw.

Continued success guys and keep up the great work (the product, AND the support!) ;D

Regards,

Rej

Lisandro · 2007-08-03T18:17:05.000Z

Rej, it’s just a matter of waiting a little… soon Comodo firewall will be available for Vista…

system · 2007-08-03T18:55:07.000Z

Tech,

Aye, I’m on the email list for when it comes out

In the meantime, it gives me a chance to discover what’s out there too.

Rej

system · 2007-08-22T18:41:25.000Z

Hello again. It has been a while since I posted about this problem. I uninstallled ZoneAlarm Free Home for Vista and the page loading problems did clear up. Problem is, I really like using ZA. Is there an .exe file in the Avast program that I should give “Server Rights” under ZA to make the Webshield work better? I already gave the Webscanner “Server Rights” but it didn’t help any. I would really like to find a way to use both Avast with the Webshield active AND ZA too. Any ideas? Thanks if you can help.

lukor · 2007-08-22T21:18:12.000Z

Hi,

the problem is the current version of Zone Alarm.

We have exchanged a few emails with the developers from ZoneLabs/Checkpoint and indeed they admitted there is a problem in the firewall. On Vista, Zone Alarm causes a slowdown of several seconds on every incoming connection. This happens regardless of the fact if avast! is installed on the machine or not. Only that with avast! installed you see the problem more quickly, since WebShield accepts a lot of connections from your browser.

Other applications, like any ad-blocker, parental control, anonymizer, regular HTTP caching proxy, and even IIS or Apache Web Server running on Vista with Zone Alarm (simply everthing that accepts connections) is really a bad bad idea. At least in the current ZA version.

However today we were informed that ZoneLabs team had finally found out a fix for the problem. It should be out in the next Zone Alarm version (but we don’t know when this is going to be released).

If you really like Zone Alarm, we suggest either turn the WebShield off, temporarily, until the fixed ZA version will be out, or at least configure your browser to use the proxy on localhost:12080 manually (don’t use the auto-redirect). By this, you will be still hit by the slowdown, but since the browser is trying to keep the connection active as long as possible (when configure to use proxy manually) the slowdown may be slightly less obvious.

Cheers,
Lukas.

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