Hi guys,
indeed avast prevents from tampering with BFE service settings - its self-defense part blocks registry access to BFE service key. The reason for this is, as you can see, that disabled BFE also disables all sorts of network related services, such as Firewall or WebShield etc.
Avast here indeed was the reason why BFE could not be started (resp. why the registry for the service could not be changed back from disabled to automatic), it somehow assumed that whatever is in the registry should be protected - assuming that we protect correct state and not the incorrect one (with BFE disabled).
Two comments:
- what caused previously running BFE to be "disabled"? I have no idea and would like to find out. There are known virus families that disable BFE.
- avast could probably detect such state a warn as soon as BFE is stopped or disabled in the registry (or even change it back), not just "protect" the key in the registry
Thanks for reporting this,
we'll look into this.
Lukas
Edit: starting from Avast 2014 R4 we are checking the state of BFE service and warn during setup if BFE is not running.