Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: poirot on January 22, 2006, 06:28:05 PM
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I downloaded a few days ago Avast and all is ok. Now i'd like to install an Avast version on my other pc,as i've read somewhere you can deploy the software in a second pc with the same code given by Avast the first time: is this true?
If it is i'd like-for the time being-to download and use in this second pc of mine ,which runs Antivir Premium, a limited version of Avast as an on demand scanner with practically only the Email module working no limits. This would entail disabling all modules apart from the email one.
Can such a Custom install be done of Avast4Home as to basically provide :
Scan on demand
Email protection
Updates
Can this be attempted (i used to run Antivir with AVG Email Scanner successfully in the past),or Avast needs more to function?
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You can use the registration key for the home version on more than one system provided they both qualify for non-commercial use.
avast! isn't designed to be used as an on-demand scanner and to get it do do this requires much hacking (which I wouldn't recommend), the email scanner uses elements of the resident scanner, the scanning engine for one I believe. So I don't think it would work as a stand alone email scanner.
Previous versions of antivir could run non-resident as a back-up scanner to avast. However the latest antivir isn't compatible with avast (and possibly no longer with AVG either) as they are effectively both resident scanners.
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DavidR , once again a quick,competent and to the point reply from you!
What you say is what i feared to be the truth....this means i will have to say goodby to Antivir,after years of honourable service, as the new version 7 wont take care of IMAP mail either.
I could keep Avast resident and Antivir on demand, but i guess that soon Antivir version 6 will be inoperable,especially since i run the Premium one.
So perhaps the best thing to do is running Avast with occasional BitDefender online scans,just to doublecheck.
thanks again, poirot
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Your welcome.
A lot of people on the forums used to use antivir as a backup, but version 7 is proving to cause conflict issues. I think it is going to be more difficult to even have it as a back-up on-demand option, Tech has reported as much in these forums (try a search) and has stopped trialing the version 7 beta.
There are other on-demand only AVs you could use ClamWin is just one, I also think BitDefender does and on-demand option, but with any installed option you have to maintain the signature database or it is of less use.
However, an occasional on-line scan as backup is probably less hassle.
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Yes, Bit Defender Free goes quite good with avast! My experience for some time now.
If you remember David, we discussed this earlier. Bit Defender Free has two resident modules although it is just On-demand scanner. These processes together are occuping no more than 0.6-0.8 MB of active memory. In spite of that it is a fact that avast seems to digest those other AV resident activities very well. Bon Apetite :)
P.S. The only confrontation was when avast discovered Bit Defenders unencrypted virus definition from one of mentioned processes. This occurs when avast is doing the memory scan. But you can surely put this to the ignore list.
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thanks for letting me know ,Zagor and DavidR, i was in fact thinking about using the on demand Bit Defender version, which i already downloaded yesterday, and will install as soon as i've sorted out things with avast in this pc.
Fact is i have Sygate Pro here and the famous IE & FF habit of going out without a notice with Sygate and a local proxy (Web Shield) is worrying me a bit.
I'm actively searching the pages of this forum in order to study the matter (i noticed Jarmo P ,who i often met at sygate forum,is active here,'Hello,Jarmo')
I hope not to go off topic ,but i still do not understand if disabling the Web shield would entail losing such a great protection or not, having all remaining providers enabled.
After all what really should matter, for the relative protection offered by ANY antivirus heuristic-proactive system , should be the resident scanning monitor,here at Avast named the Standard Shield, am i right?
If i could lightheartedly disable the Web shield,i'd have solved my firewall problems and at the same time made Avast a bit lighter.
Any views?
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Well there are those how used Sygate who manually set their browser/s to use the web shield proxy so it doesn't have to be on transparent mode (can't remember the string for avast4.ini), so only those programs that you manually set to use the web shield other programs trying to connect to the internet port 80 wouldn't go through the localhost proxy and be interrogated by Sygate.
However, with the aquasition of Sygate by Symantec (keeping the Sy's in order ;D) and their decision to discontinue Sygate Personal Firewall solutions, perhaps it is time to look for another firewall?
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Well, we did praise avast-BitDefender combo, but I discovered something strange. Namely, during startup BitD's two resident processes are consuming heavy memory. I will quote my letter to BitD's support team:
Hello all,
I run avast Pro with Bit Defender Free. Although Bit Defender Free is just On-demand AV, I find these processes in my active memory:
*bdss.exe & xcommsvr.exe *
And why are they consuming so much memory?!
*bdss.exe up to 19MB*,
*xcommsvr.exe up to 4MB*,
and both in the same time! This happens after boot. It last later on and then stops (I've tried to reproduce the situation to find what is causing this decrease, but with no success). Then these processes are consuming no more than 0.7-0.8MB of memory. I tried to disable them on startup but it is annoying to go to services to restart every time I want to do the scan. This is an important issue. If you need my help for sending more informations, please answer. Or you have resolved this occurence and maybe I should wait for the next stable release?
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This was their reply:
Thank you for your interest in our security solution.
You are using two security solutions which can cause errors such as those you
have mentioned. We recommend using only one security solution, not more at the
same time.
We are looking forward to your reply.
Best regards,
Alina Popescu
BitDefender Technical Support Engineer
Very tactical I'm afraid. I guess their politics for the time being is not to resolve incompatibilities with other Vendor's AV. This remains pending until further notice.
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Assuming these are services, rather than simply startup processes, you could make a batch file to stop the services and then to start them again.
Example:
Net Stop "outpost firewall service"
This stops in this instance the Outpost firewall, the name comes from the Services Name and must be in quotes, so create a batch file called StopBitDef.bat or anything.bat and create an entry for each service you want to Stop. I tend to place these .bat files in the C:\ root folder.
Create a batch file called StartBitDef.bat or anything.bat and create an entry for each service you want to Start. Use this to start the services prior to doing your BitDefender scan but after pausing standard shield.
Net Start "outpost firewall service"
When your done close bit defender, run the StopBit.bat (or shortcut to it) and enable standard shield.
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Zagor- thanks for the info, i am a bit worried now. I had a similar experience years ago when i wanted to add BitDefender to Antivir, difference is BD at that time was not a On Demand only like it is now, so i thought they had predisposed everything in the right way and there were no more unnecessary files running.
It seems it is not so.
Strange they assert the 'one software only' theory when BitDefender is running full steam (not On Demand) alongside Kaspersky in the AVK G-Data antivirus!
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Wellcome here poirot.
I answered your personal message concerning Sygate.
If not bothering too much for SPF letting browsers out, I still consider it a fine firewall. With pro maybe they soon stop sending IDS updates though. That should not be such a big worry.
I am planning to stay with Sygate until the new 64 bit operating system, unless some security bug merge out. :)
I tried Kerio 4.2.2, it was fine with features, but some BSOD's.
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Thank you David, great suggestion. I think that will hold the water untill they decide to do something about it. I'll try it, but still is annoying when you want to use the right-click scan though.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the entry in the batch file would go like this:
Net Stop "BitDefender Communicator"
Net Stop "BitDefender Scan Server"
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Thank you David, great suggestion. I think that will hold the water untill they decide to do something about it. I'll try it, but still is annoying when you want to use the right-click scan though.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the entry in the batch file would go like this:
Net Stop "BitDefender Communicator"
Net Stop "BitDefender Scan Server"
Assuming that they are the correct names in the Windows Services, then yes there is no need to have anything else in the StopBit.bat file. Just save that file as StartBit.bat and change Net Stop to Net Start and your in business.
Just make sure you use a text editor (notepad, etc.) to create the .bat files so there are no strange formating characters included in the file/s.
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How to disable transparent webshield proxy and allow only those browsers you want use it:
In Avast go to webshield provider, Customize, in Basic tab blank the redirected HTTP port field. Now no browser can use webshield.
To make Firefox use it:
http://www.avast.com/files/tutorials/ws_ffproxy.htm
I answer it here also since you asked that in PM :)
Needs to remind here if someone else also might find this info usefull :P
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Thanks Jarmo it certainly reminded me.
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Heh, was maybe intented to someones more newbies than you or others participating this thread, but glad i did not offend you :P
It is a nice Flash animation from Avast team or who ever made it.
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No I meant the clearing of the HTTP redirect ;D, but yes the Tutorials are very good much easier than trying to explain what to do.
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After a lot of examined posts both here and at the old Sygate forum about the proxy problem i decided to heed Jarmo P (and others)advice and ,in order to fend off the threat of not being informed about outgoing connections by Sygate, i just blanked the redirect space which numbers 80 by default inside WebShield custom tab.
This is enough to be sure no browser,in my case either Firefox or IE,if they're set to Ask in the appropriate section of a firewall, can access the web without consent.
In my case,iìm glad to have to make a few clicks more and be sure of what is going out. And also of keeping WebShield alive and checking!
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In my case,iìm glad to have to make a few clicks more and be sure of what is going out. And also of keeping WebShield alive and checking!
I am not sure you understand that if you only did empty that redirected field and didn't set any manual proxy connection setting to any of the browsers you use, then why run web shield at all?
It does not protect from anything else than browser http traffic. You can stop the provider if it is not used and save a little RAM memory.
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You have good reasons to doubt about my understanding the workings of WebShield,but,no,i'm aware of what you say and i tried first without any browser proxy,then at the moment i had 'proxied' Firefox and i am asked the same way,as expected, so its ok. I was planning to administer a 127.0.0.1 + 12080 to IE as well today,as i use it just two or three timees a month.
ps-i had before my eyes the 02-21-05 Sygate forum thread where Sded & Jarmo P were talking about these matters in detail.
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You have good reasons to doubt about my understanding the workings of WebShield,but,no,i'm aware of what you say and i tried first without any browser proxy,then at the moment i had 'proxied' Firefox and i am asked the same way,as expected, so its ok.
You sure should not be asked from Sygate if web shield is working for you and that manual proxy setting you made for FF is correct one?
If you made it right, go to
http://eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm
and try those zipped files there.
If avast webshield warns you instead the standard shield and web shield is working, it should be an abort connection message.
Nothing else, not to put it to virus guarantee or any.
There is nothing you can do to the loss of outbound connection control SPF to browser that is proxied by web shield. You wont get asked. Period!
But I allow my firefox to internet and connections get logged as ashwebsv.exe entries in sygate traffic log. So not that bad since IE is not proxied.
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Jarmo,you're right ,i was too quick in saying it was still warning, matter of fact it did once, then i posted,then i wasnt at the pc the whole day, when i came back i realised of the sad truth.......
Firefox,redirerected,dont ask anything,whereas IE does,but its not redirected.
Other applications do.
The avast IMAP E mail scanner is very good and warns quite efficiently about suspicious mails.
On the other hand,i dont want to give up the outgoing control........
what could be done was done,now i have to think.... thanks to everyone who helped,
i dont feel like pulling the cord any longer to the risk of annoying readers.
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You don't annow anyone reading here.
But Firefox protection you had was real.
Email protection is more like based on heuristics.
With avast web shield you should feel safe, as you tested on that test virus I gave you.
I have experienced that also on some web page that got a java script trojan. So from experience, I really recommend it to you.
EDIT
Other applications will sure ask you from Sygate, just not one browser you have proxied by manual web shield configuration. Not so big thing with Firefox I think?
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Yes Jarmo, the Web Shield springs into action a second after clicking the eicar.zip downloads (i didnt reach the point of downloading,WS stopped it before), really impressive. so it is fully working.
I tried the Gibson's Leak Test as well,but here,being in the realm of trojans, BOClean stops it cold and deletes it afterwards when i let it do it, BC is the latest version 4.20.03, and it gives other programs no chance to intervene.
You're probably right,i could feel safe in spite of the 'minor' fault....