NNTP scanning : how to see if it works ?

[Roland]

Good evening.
My system is W98 SE, Kerio Firewall 2.15, Netscape 4.78 for emails and news, Firefox 1.0 for http and ftp.
With the last version of Avast (4.6.603) all seems to work fine (webscanning, incoming and outgoing email scanning, etc...) but I have no clue that NNTP scanning is working.
When I read my mail, I see the Ashmaisv.exe icon in the taskbar, and the messages each time I receive a virus (and there are a lots of them!).
And when I take a look in the avast window where I can start, pause and stop the different scanners (my avast is in french the window is called "Scanner résident Avast!)", I see information about the last scanned email and the last found virus.
But when I read news, Netscape works well, but Avast doesn't seem to scan anything.
No ashmaisv.exe icon appears in the taskbar, and the information about last scanned file doesn't change (when I read emails before going to read news, I allways see the information about the last mail that has been scanned, even after reading tens of threads in a newsgroup).
I didn't have a virus in a news message so far, so I can't confirm that the news are or are not scanned by Ashmaisv.exe.
When I look in my firewall for opened connexions, I see Ashmaisv for ports 25 and 110 (mail), 143 (Imap) and also 119 (news)
If anyone could tell me how to see if news scanning works ??

TIA

Roland

[sded]

Works for me; but I'm using Agent, not Netscape.  You should see the "clean" message from avast! in your downloaded news message bodies if it is scanning and the "insert note" is checked.  Also, name of downloaded news message should appear in Internet Mail provider.  But nothing to scan if you just download and review headers.
Note: Sorry for typo, "mail" should have been "news"

[Roland]

Thanks sded for your reply !

For mail I have no problems, and have the message :
 avast! Antivirus: Inbound message clean.
 Virus Database (VPS): 0508-3, 25/02/2005
 Tested on: xx/xx/xx xx:xx:xx
 avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2005 ALWIL Software.

And viruses are well detected.

My concern is for newsgroups. When I read messages (not just the headers, the message itself) there is no stamping by avast in downloaded messages and no ashmaisv activity icon in the taskbar.
Perhaps it's a normal behaviour, but I'm not sure...
Of course "scan inbound news", "scan outbond news", and "insert note into clean inbond news" are checked in the NNTP task settings.

Roland

[Vlk]

Aren't you using secure (SSL) connection to the server? Avast cannot filter SSL traffic...

[Roland]

Good evening Vlk

No, I think I have no SSL secure connection.
I'm connected to the newsserver of my provider (news.free.fr), and had nothing to configure for security purposes

Roland

[Roland]

So, I finally found what doesn't go :
It sems that in the case of Netscape 4.78, Avast! isn't able to automatically configure the nntp scanning.
(For mail scanning no problem)
What I had to do:
In Avast.ini in the [Mailscanner] section:
ad the line DefaultNntpServer=news.free.fr
In the files "prefs.js" and "liprefs.js" in the User folder of Netscape :
Change "user_pref("network.hosts.nntp_server", "news.free.fr");"
into "user_pref("network.hosts.nntp_server", "127.0.0.1");"
Now it works !

Anyway, thanks for all replies

Roland