Explanation of error message?

[TacoBellSteve]

Hello.  I would like to report a glitch I've encountered with Avast 4.6 Home Edition (4.6.623) regarding newsgroup scanning, and hopefully get an idea how to fix it.
 
My computer has a P4 Pentium processor, Windows XP Home SP2, 1GB of RAM.  I use a DSL modem to connect to the Internet.  Outlook Express 6 SP2 is my email and newsgroup program.
 
Avast 4.6 Home Edition has the option to scan newsgroups messages, (NNTP) inbound and outbound.  However, when I turned that feature on, I started to get this error message when downloading new newsgroup messages..."Outlook Express was unable to switch to the newsgroup 'fuse.discuss.zoomtown' on the server 'news.fuse.net'.  And underneath it says....."503 Program Error or Time Out."  This error message happened when I visited several newsgroups, not just the one listed here.
 
I didn't get that message all the time, but often enough that I contacted my ISP, Zoomtown of Cincinnat Bell.  Their techs had never heard of that error message before, but suggested it may be related to that fact that Avast was scanning newsgroups.  So, I turned off that feature, and sure enough, the error message did not reappear. 

I emailed Avast tech support about this glitch, and was told to tinker with the server timeout for my newsgroup account (found on the Advanced tab).  I changed it from 1 to 2 minutes, but the error message reappeared.

Any other suggestions?     For the record, I have 3 processes running: Internet Mail, Network Shield and Standard Shield.

Steve

[vojtech]

Please put the line
Log=20
to file avast4.ini under [MailScanner] for detailed logging and then stop & start 'Internet Mail' provider. After the error occurs, send me the log file Avast4\DATA\log\aswMaiSv.log by mail.
Thank you.

[madmax69]

Attaching LOG from thread ID http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=40619.0 as requesed

Re: Avast! Internet Mail Scanner disconnecting inbound/outbound.

[alanrf]

When you go Control Panel > System > Advanced tab > Environmental variables

You are likely to see two set of environmental variables, one default set and one for the current system user. Please be sure that the Windows temp space has been changed from m: to c: in both sets of variables.   

[madmax69]

Hi,

Yes, Thanks. As I confirmed. Both sets of variables are correctly set to C:\TEMP (both TMP, and TEMP)  and also confirm that M: does not exist at time of posting. Control panel-> System->Environment was used to check.

Both are set correctly for User and System environment tables. Had one not been set I would have reset it and retried. PC has also been rebooted twice since removal of M:  SETX.EXE was used to set both at login. Perhaps this is being picked up by a service or something querying prior to login?

All other programs are using C:\TEMP as can be gauged by the presence of new temporary files

The following batch file is used to set and drive M: was disabled 2 boots ago

----------------------------------------
@echo off
if exist "m:" goto setm
ECHO Setting TEMP variable to Hard Drive C...
md c:\temp
C:\tools\setx.exe temp c:\temp
C:\tools\setx.exe temp c:\temp -m
C:\tools\setx.exe tmp c:\temp
C:\tools\setx.exe tmp c:\temp -m
goto end

:setm
ECHO Setting TEMP variable to RAMDISK M...
md m:\temp >nul
md m:\temp\posts >nul
C:\tools\setx.exe temp m:\temp
C:\tools\setx.exe temp m:\temp -m
C:\tools\setx.exe tmp m:\temp
C:\tools\setx.exe tmp m:\temp -m

:end
----------------------------------------