Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: Diggah on March 01, 2006, 02:21:45 PM
-
I've been happily using Avast on my PC (hooked to a large network with shared internet access) but recently it appears that the webshield is "clogging" my connection.
It doesnt seem to be linked to any specific site and the first I know about it is when the connection dies. The icon doesn't move (I think) so I dont think its actually scanning but using TCPView I can see its holding about 8 or 9 connections open. When I close those connections using TCPView it all comes back online and avast behaves normally.
I'm attempting to get round the problem by deactivating the webshield altogther but Im purplexed why it suddenly started doing this (I even did a fresh install but no change).
-
The icon doesn't move (I think) so I dont think its actually scanning but using TCPView I can see its holding about 8 or 9 connections open. When I close those connections using TCPView it all comes back online and avast behaves normally.
WebShield redirects the connections to itself to scan the http traffic but it should 'release' them when they finished (i.e., the download of that page is finished).
I'm attempting to get round the problem by deactivating the webshield altogther but Im purplexed why it suddenly started doing this (I even did a fresh install but no change).
Which is your operational system? Which firewall do you use?
-
Allthough I realise this post is old, I have the same problem more and more recently.
Browsing seems to work fine, until something happens (whatever that may be) and browsing stops. The verbose mode does not show the scanned pages anymore and I can acces nothing anymore. Stopping webshield immedeatly starts browsing again. I get this behaviour in both IE7 and FF? I have avast 4.7.1001 and use comodo firewall 2.4.18.184, but as stopping webshield starts browsing again, I guess it's not a firewall problem. I did have the problem when I was using kerio btw. My system is Windos XP, with all fixes installed...
Any ideas?
Best regards, Peter
-
I have a similar problem. WebShield causes Firefox 2x to often hang at "Waiting for x"
-
I believe there must be some other factor involved - I am using the latest FF (2.0.0.10) and (at the moment) the latest avast beta. I only use the Windows XP firewall. I do not encounter frequent, random or infrequent hangs in browsing, nor do I have any reports of hangs from those I support (using a mix of IE7 and FF) who are using the current production version of avast home.
-
I believe there must be some other factor involved - I am using the latest FF (2.0.0.10) and (at the moment) the latest avast beta. I only use the Windows XP firewall. I do not encounter frequent, random or infrequent hangs in browsing, nor do I have any reports of hangs from those I support (using a mix of IE7 and FF) who are using the current production version of avast home.
I've had it on several systems with several browsers, IE6, IE7, Opera, FF... the only common thing is avast. I can sort of prove it, because I have two virtual machines that are clones from each other. One uses avast the other not. If the avast one develops the problem, the clone works fine. It's not really proof, because sometimes the problem stays away weeks, then suddenly without warning it's back. It's just not reproducable. However, when I can not browse anymore, disabling avast webshield solves that problem... So if avast is the cause or not, it certainly is not compatible with something else. The clones are plain xp systems btw, nothing fancy installed, they are there just for testing purposes...
-
"virtual machines" is a term that concerns me. It implies that there is another layer of software (the "some other factor involved" I mentioned) that could be interfering with the work of avast.
It may not be totally dissimilar that I encounter a lot of avast errors logged when I work with the mounted image of a backup I have created with my backup imaging software (Acronis True Image) or when I work with an image of my drive from a few hours ago created by Goback. In both cases there is a software abstraction layer getting between avast and the real disk accesses.
-
"virtual machines" is a term that concerns me. It implies that there is another layer of software (the "some other factor involved" I mentioned) that could be interfering with the work of avast.
Virtual machines in this case are VMware processes. Proven technology that lots and lots of companies use to get more out of their hardware. On several hardware platform are similar solutions... What VMWare does is start a x86 processor, not from a chip. but from a disk file... So not just another layer of software. Both "machines" are running their own xp installation completely unaware of each other. So basically I have three pc's in one box...
But... To stop that discussion... That was just one thing. I still have the problem on several family pc's The vm's are just identical up to avast, so that sounded like a good testing ground...
-
VMWare ..like the products I mentioned (Acronis True Image and Goback) are purely software. I did not mention any hardware based processes. So, essentially they are all one and the same however you want to try to describe them. They are software abstraction layers that have to be invoked between avast and the operating system that really runs the access to the hardware.
-
Whatever... Fact is I have the problem on several different pc's (IE diff hardware)... I just started testing on vmware to see if the precense or absense of avast made a difference and guess what? it did... So at least the vm's have the same problem as the physical pc's
-
Activate logging in WebShield:
1. Edit <avast>\data\avast4.ini file
2. Find the section [WebScanner]
3. Add the line:
EnableLogging=1
4. Restart Web Shield in XP (terminate and start again) or whole PC in case of Win98
5. Browse (trying to access some webpages)
The log file are <avast>\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 (at) asw.cz
After that, disable the logging to avoid a big log file.
-
Enabled loggin and started the webscanner. Now hope this gets some usefull info soon. Thanks!
-
Off course, since enabling logging everything works smooth :-( At the moment I am at my mothers pc which also has avast, WITH webshield enabled and she never has the problem... That is a Vista machine however...
What I do notice is that browsing became a bit more slugghish. OK, the pages are scanned now I have the webshield enabled again... But sometimes I have the feeling I have to click "slowly" to get a link activated. Not just click-release, but click-wait-relase ??? Do you have an Umbuntu version >:( getting more and more tired of windows.
Anyway, I'll keep the loggin enabled and hope I get the problem again. Or rather not :-\
-
Well, this morning I got "lucky" browsing came to a halt. I tried refresshing the pages several times
without luck. The I stopped the web shield service and tried to
refresh the pages again, and all was back to normal again...
I mailed the log to rypacek. I hope the log provides clues for this problem...
-
Hello trigger,
I will look at your log. However, in the situation, when WebShield appears to be stuck, even better than the log would be the memory dump of the process.
If you can, and will experience the problem in the future, please download the userdump.exe utility from here:
http://public.avast.com/~rypacek/userdump.exe
Run it with the following command line:
userdump ashwebsv.exe
A dump file with the name ashwebsv.dmp will be created in the current directory. Could you please zip it and upload to our ftp (since it would probably be too big to send via email). The public ftp server is here:
ftp://ftp.avast.com/incoming
(use the name: anonymous, password: your email, when required)
Thanks a lot and sorry for the hassle.
Lukas.
Edit: noticed you are using the UNSUPPORTED version of Comodo Firewall (by unsupported I mean it is not supported by Comodo). We have had some bad experiences tracking bugs on this version (and yes we have found some) - but comodo is not going to release any fixes for their old version. I am not saying this WebShield freeze has necesarrily anything to do with Comodo, but have you considered upgrading to their latest version? Thanks.
-
Will do. No hassle. I just would love the webshield to work ok...
-
Another thing... The machines are always on... Unless there is some reason to boot them... That may be a factor too...
-
uploading the udump file now... man this is anoying :'(
-
Did you find it ???
-
I see a number of threads blocked by spampalLSP.dll. Are you using SpamPal?
Can you please try the following: open the file <avast>\data\avast4.ini, and add the following line to the [WebScanner] section:
IgnoreLSP=spampalLSP.dll
Then restart the WebShield provider (or reboot the machine) and see if it makes any difference.
Thanks
Vlk
-
Can you please try the following: open the file <avast>\data\avast4.ini, and add the following line to the [WebScanner] section:
IgnoreLSP=spampalLSP.dll
Then restart the WebShield provider (or reboot the machine) and see if it makes any difference.
Updated WebShield section on avast4.ini file thread.
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=1647.msg15960#msg15960
-
I did use spampal in the past. It's still installed, but not active, but there may be some hidden things still "active" Spampal was using transparent proxy to scan mail, so that may have caused problems with the transparent scanning of avast. if I get another hang, I'll make a new dump and remove spampal altogether to see if that makes a difference.
Thanks so far!!!
-
Mmmm, so far so good... The sluggishness I mentioned before is gone also... I realise it's only three days, but the last time I had the hang by now... Having said this, I'll probably hang when pushing the post button :-) It's too soon to be sure, but I have a good feeling this time... Will keep you informed....
-
Trigger, are you using Comodo?
Last days we have an update of Comodo and, maybe, it could have changed something in your system.
-
Yes, I use comodo, but I've disabled the defense+ module and killed the cmdagent process due to the cpu hogging... It's version 3.0.13.268 and as far as I know it was not updated on my system in the past couple of days... Checking for updates now... and it says no updates available... I'll leave the settings as it is at the moment to see if the problem is gone indeed... Then I can remove the spampal exclusion to see if that brings back the problem???
-
Just wanted to let you guys know, I have not had any hang issues since the exclusion of the spampal module...