When downloading from newsgroups, web traffic is blocked

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I’ve have the following problem since about 2-3 days ago:

When I start downloading (or actually even when I start up the newsgroup downloader program), all web traffic is blocked. (I get the “The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.” message in Firefox, IE is also blocked similarly)

When I disable the web-shield, or when I close the newgroup program, the web-traffic is normal again.

I have had this same problem when some other programs are running, but less reliably.

The newsgroup application is question is GrabIt (1.6.2beta), and I have been using this version for some months now without any previous problems, while using the same avast! settings (no NNTP traffic scanning).
Another application which triggered this same issue while running is the MMORPG game Final Fantasy XI Online.

My avast! version data:

Version 4.7 home edition
Build: Oct2006 (4.7.892)
Xtreme toolkit version 1.9.4.0
ActiveSkin version 4.2.7.3

VPS data:

Compilation date: 09-11-2006
File version 0647-0

The OS I’m using is WinXP - SP2.

2

I’m not sure if it will help, but maybe you can activate logging in WebShield:

  1. Edit \data\avast4.ini file
  2. Find the section [WebScanner]
  3. Add the line:
    EnableLogging=1
  4. Restart Web Shield (terminate and start again)
  5. Browse (trying to access that webpages and try to start up the newsgroup downloader program you’ve said)

The log file are \data\log\ashwebsv.log and ashwebsv.ws.
They would be accessible when WebShield is terminated again.
Post them here or send by mail to rypacek@asw.cz

After that, disable the logging to avoid a big log file.

3

I can’t seem to reproduce this issue after a reboot.

But I will post a log should I encounter it again. (I have had it before intermittently)

4

Ah well that was quicker than I expected: its back…

I enabled the logging, but the only thing I get back in the log file is this (one line) in ashwebsv.log - ashwebsv.ws is empty:

11-11-2006 0:47:09,“”,“”,“”,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,Unknown process,PID: 0, SEQ: 0