Internet connection timeout elapsed. Continue waiting?

[brijones]

Hello,

This is my first post on these boards, and I come here bearing my greatest pet peeve with avast.

This error comes up fairly infrequently most of the time, and generally doesn't piss me off most the time.

However, during the combination of having Azureus (bit torrent) running, and trying to run Civilization 4, this message constantly comes up stealing focus away from the game I am trying to play. This message lists the javaw.exe as the program trying to access an IP.

This message occurs as often as every 10 minutes, after I click No, or Yes, either one makes no difference to the frequency. I try to go back into my game, it works, but takes 2 minutes for the game to be back up and running in all it's glory.

I have scanned the options and I have found no way of removing this useless message. Why would I possibly want to know if a connection is timing out? It's completely useless. Can anyone suggest a way of removing this feature? Or on the very least have an option to automatically click No without the message even coming up?

Avast options are so bleak of any functionality. Even my ADSL modem has more options then it.

[neal62]

You may be getting this message about timeout generated from your ISP. Some ISP guidelines will time out an inactive connection to them. Try clicking on say the browsers "refresh" button every now and then while your playing a game and see if that doesn't get rid of the message you have been receiving. Although I see your on ADSL so really the ISP connection shouldn't be doing that. Not much telling what it may be. Hopefully someone else might be able to help you.

[brijones]

You may be getting this message about timeout generated from your ISP. Some ISP guidelines will time out an inactive connection to them. Try clicking on say the browsers "refresh" button every now and then while your playing a game and see if that doesn't get rid of the message you have been receiving. Although I see your on ADSL so really the ISP connection shouldn't be doing that. Not much telling what it may be. Hopefully someone else might be able to help you.

Thankyou for your reply, however, I think you've missed the purpose of my complaint completely. At the moment, Avast's error message is causing me to alt-tab out of the game I am trying to play. So me alt-tabbing out of my game and clicking the refresh button on my browser doesn't remove the shear fact that I don't want to have to stop playing my game every 10 minutes.

Please re-read my OP. I'm not looking to blame either avast, my computer, my isp, or the internet in general. But it's Avast's decision to place an annoyingly useless Yes/No message that takes away the focus from everything, just to ask me whether I want to let a TCP/IP session timeout or continue waiting for a reply.

I have 2 alternatives at the moment, ask for a way to remove this annoying message, or remove Avast's software completely. I would rather ask for a way to remove the annoying message, then remove it. I like the software itself, only this stupid message is driving me insane at the worst possible time. It's lucky I'm not running a game that is 'alt-tab unfriendly', or I'd be 1000 times more pissed off.

[alanrf]

I think I can understand your point of view Mr. Jones.

It is so damned annoying when you install a piece of software and then it goes and does what it is intended to do ... alerting you of something decidely unusual occuring on your system and the bloody thing is interfering with the game.

I suppose the game is preventing you from thinking about what the warning might mean.  That perhaps important information is being sent out from your system against your wishes.  Well never mind ... just turn off the alarm and enjoy your game.

Since you probably are too busy to search for any help here you might want to look at this thread:

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=16521.0

[brijones]

I think I can understand your point of view Mr. Jones.

It is so damned annoying when you install a piece of software and then it goes and does what it is intended to do ... alerting you of something decidely unusual occuring on your system and the bloody thing is interfering with the game.

I suppose the game is preventing you from thinking about what the warning might mean.  That perhaps important information is being sent out from your system against your wishes.  Well never mind ... just turn off the alarm and enjoy your game.

Since you probably are too busy to search for any help here you might want to look at this thread:

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=16521.0

Excuse me? But Avast is a virus checker, not a firewall program. The message has absolutely nothing in the possible world in any way or form anything to do with a security risk. I am running a hardware router/firewall solution, on top of this I am running a software firewall as well. If you are suggesting that this message has any security significance, then I think your paranoid.

Also, how would listening to the message change anything? It doesn't say anything I don't already know. Yes, one of my bittorrent peers has timed out, gee, big problem there. Gee, what a great security flaw in windows, TCP/IP connection timeouts, the new generation DoS attacks. You know even though the messages appear every 10 minutes or so, it can still be classed as a DoS, but I think they would have to increase the frequency to perhaps a thousand timeouts per minute before I at least thought there was any chance of a problem.

But the issue here is, who the heck asked Avast to act as a firewall? I sure didn't. Not that connection timeouts would possibly enact anyone to panic. I just want the feature to be gone. But what really makes me annoyed is the fact that your calling me an idiot for wanting this message to disappear. What in the world could this tiny message ever mean? It's so brief it can't possibly be taken seriously.

[Lisandro]

This message occurs as often as every 10 minutes
Can anyone suggest a way of removing this feature?

Please, post a screnshot... I'm not sure what message you're talking about...
Did you try the Troubleshootin option (avast settings tab) of disabling the messages while you're playing?
You should use the latest beta version (4.6.781) here:
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=17127.0
or download: http://files.avast.com/files/beta/aswbeta.exe

[brijones]

This message occurs as often as every 10 minutes
Can anyone suggest a way of removing this feature?

Please, post a screnshot... I'm not sure what message you're talking about...
Did you try the Troubleshootin option (avast settings tab) of disabling the messages while you're playing?
You should use the latest beta version (4.6.781) here:
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=17127.0
or download: http://files.avast.com/files/beta/aswbeta.exe

I fixed the problem by going into the On-Access scannar options for each thing and enabling Silent Mode on the relevent options.

The troubleshooting option didn't work, it still came up even though running a 3D game.

[DavidR]

Well before alan posted I was going to say something similar why would Sun's Java require an outbound connection, does the game or Azureus use Java based control, etc.?

I was also going to say avast doesn't block internet access just as you said it isn't a firewall and are you sure this was an avast warning.

Excuse me? But Avast is a virus checker, not a firewall program.

avast, either internet mail or web shield providers scans some internet traffic, web shield port 80 and web shield ports 25,110,119 for email/news traffic, they are the only two that may report a timeout.
If you have a program that is using those ports but doesn't use the correct protocol for those ports (not complying with standards) then avast effectively won't be able to scan the content and a timeout may occure.

What we really have to identify is why the timeout is occuring and which provider is responsible (if it's indeed avast), treat the disease and not the symptom (the timeout message). Then we may even be able to stop you seeing the message, if not treat the disease remove the symptom.

If you could post a screen shot or the warning, this could help to pin down the cause.

[DavidR]

It would appear that this timeout problem is caused by Azureus not conforming internet to standards/protocols by using the email ports for p2p usage, the email scanner attempts to scan any traffic on the email ports and because it isn't in the expected protocol it cause these timeouts.

See this post and thread.
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=16521.msg140284#msg140284

[brijones]

It would appear that this timeout problem is caused by Azureus not conforming internet to standards/protocols by using the email ports for p2p usage, the email scanner attempts to scan any traffic on the email ports and because it isn't in the expected protocol it cause these timeouts.

See this post and thread.
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=16521.msg140284#msg140284

Thanks for your incredible help. I'm not sure about what you are referring to in regards to Azureus, reason why I say that, is I have my port settings in Azureus set to a 5 digit port number that I randomly made up one day. So, I am wondering whether disabling javaw.exe from using the mail ports would hinder the p2p functionality.

It's a very interesting aspect, I'd love to know what feature actually requires this.

[DavidR]

No problem and welcome to the forums.

Whilst I don't use any p2p programs an Azureus in particular, I doubt that you could stop azureus using the email ports for what is essentialy p2p traffic, it is probably built into azureus and really is something that they should address, e.g not using pre defined use of ports, conforming to internet standards/protocols, etc.

As you can see from the image in the link I gave, it shows it accessing a web url using port 25 (the last bit of the url :25) this would seem to be internal to the program and not something you select. So if your timeout messages show the same use of the SMTP port 25 avast will attempt to scan it, believing it to be email being sent because it uses the smtp (send) port.

Now you can have the [MailScanner] in the avast4.ini ignore this program javaw.exe so it doesn't scan its content, that however, is a potential security risk.

[MailScanner]
IgnoreProcess=javaw.exe

Personally I would look for a different program that conforms to internet standards/protocols.

Does the p2p shield scan the download content of azureus? It does some Bit Torrent and u Torrent but not azureus in particular.

Edit: I now hope this is your greatest pet peeve of Azureus and not avast! as it isn't avast! at fault

[Lisandro]

Personally I would look for a different program that conforms to internet standards/protocols.

eMule for instance.

[brijones]

Edit: I now hope this is your greatest pet peeve of Azureus and not avast! as it isn't avast! at fault

Well... Now that I know how to silence the 'false alarms', it's no longer a pet peeve.

I've added it into the IgnoreProcess thing. So far so good.

I won't call it a pet peeve of just Azureus, it's the combination of the 2 programs together.

Anyways, Azureus works great for me, I require most of the features that it provides, with great speeds, and excellent plugins. I've had no problems with the java aspect of the program. I wouldn't trade networks any day of the week to something like emule. The last time I used that program (2 months ago), 2 out of 3 things transfered were either fake or corrupt, or had misleading information. I've never found a fake torrent ever.

But that's off-topic. I think the program is fairly decent in comparison to the sausage-fest that is Norton AV 2005 (worst anti-virus ever!). However, it needs more options. I like an Anti-virus that just sits in the background and protects my computer silently. Issue solved, thanks for everyones help.

[DavidR]

I won't call it a pet peeve of just Azureus, it's the combination of the 2 programs together.

avast is only doing what it was designed for monitoring the email ports, now if azureus didn't use email ports for other purposes (not conforming to standards) using a different protocol then this wouldn't happen.

But your choice if you feel the work around doesn't leave you at risk. A lot of reviews/newsletters are now rating uTorrent and that is one of the supported p2p apps in the P2P shield azureus isn't, that leaves only Standard Shield as a last line of defence.

[altie]

Hello. My first post.

I would like to say that I've been living with this.. *annoyance*  for a very long time and am very, VERY glad to have found a way to shut the stupid warning off once and for all. Personally I think having that thing pop up while I'm doing something, or having several BZILLION of them popup when leaving the computer on overnight is a VERY annoying thing.

Thanks for all the help on this forum for helping to squash a really fat useless bug. Ok, maybe not entirely useless, but it was extremely annoying.