As the problem seems to be the Web Scanner indiscriminately letting programs pass through the firewall (though they’re marked as “ask”), I need to know if you have a solution to this problem.
There is not any perfect solution, cause It is a result of a Sygate "local proxy issue" that has been there for many years. They are not going to fix it, and the official reply from Sygate is that it would involve a major firewall rewite to fix the issue. It is something that every Sygate user should know about.
I dont think the test version Eddy mentioned is going to do the help.
I give you 2 solutions you might try.
1. After installing any new software, you can always 'Terminate" Webshield temporarily from the 'On-Access-Protection Control' options and see if anything tries to go out to net.
2. You can go to that Webshield provider module settings and blank the 'Redirected HTTP port(s) field, that i think by default is 80. Then Sygate should ask from you for every program going to net and them not knowing that the default redirector port is TCP 12080.
If you want some browser to use the Avast Webshield proxy, you can tell it in the browser's connection settings. An example is Mozilla Firefox: Tools/Options/General/Connections Settings. Select 'Manual proxy configuration' and in HTTP Proxy field put 127.0.0.1 and Port 12080. Leave the other fields, SSL FTP, Gopher and SOCKS blank. With this setting only Firebird browser will use the proxy, all other programs should be asked by Sygate firewall. I have noticed that very few sites with video might not download totally with this setting, but most do.
I normally browse using the port 80 tcp redirector, and then everything gets out. After installing software or otherwise in paranoid mood I blank that field.
You could also run Avast without WebShield, but I prefer not to.
Btw, same kind of behaviour happens also with email clients and ashWebSv.exe. They dont get asked if that provider is running, if otherwise set to do so.