Bug or am I doing something wrong?

[sowen]

I have Avast Pro, 4.1.319.

If I right-click on the blue 'a' icon, select 'on access protection control' and change a setting of the standard shield, then I look at the 'resident protection' task in the enhanced interface, then I see the change I've made (as I would expect).

However, if I change the settings via the enhanced interface task (e.g. in order to alter the 'packers' and 'virus' settings), the blue 'a' icon indicates it gets stopped and restarted, but when I right-click on the icon and select 'on access protection control' , the standard shield's settings have been changed to back to 'normal'. Why doesn't this work properly?

Scott.

[Lisandro]

Sowen, I'm not sure but this seems to happens because the 'virus' and 'packers' configurations are only present at the Pro version (Enhanced Interface). When you use the Simple User Interface you will only have access to the Home version features and not the advanced ones of Pro version.

Anyway, I'm not sure. Sometimes this happens in my system too  

[igor]

What exactly does "back to normal" mean?
The particular setting are back to the old ones, or the "Normal / High" slider shows "Normal"?

[sowen]

The slider is back to the 'normal' position.

In fact, there seems to be something wrong with persistence of almost all of the various shields' settings from the Enhanced interface of 4.1.319.

Saving 'packers' settings on anything except the standard shield doesn't work (when you leave the enhanced interface and return, the settings are back to the way they originally were).

And changing any of the settings EXCEPT packers and virus in the standard shield, doesn't properly affect the settings when viewed with the blue 'a' icon.

[igor]

Well, it's not exactly clear where the slider should be if you change some settings.

As for the rest - it sounds like a bug. Let wait if somebody (did I hear Vlk? ) has some more info...

[sowen]

I just checked the avast4.mdb database, in the 'local properties' table.

If I set the 'packers' for IM and P2P to 'all', and exit the Enhanced interface, then the entries in the database are changed to 'all'. So the interface is persisting properly.

However, when I reload the Enhanced interface, the entries are set back to their original values.

The interface appears to be initialising incorrectly.

[igor]

OK, thanks for the information!
I'm sure it will be addressed as soon as possible.

[sowen]

Thanks!

Apparently I'm one of the few people with too much time on my hands at Christmas

[Vlk]

Interesting info. I know where the problem might be. ..

It's because you're changing the default task, which has some of the preferences preset. To see exactly which preferences, look to the file deftasks.xml in the avast folder (these are the values that get written to the default avast tasks, every time you start avast).

The work around to the problem would be to create a new resident task (or more easily copy the default Resident Protection task), set it as the default task, change the settings you want, and start it. avast won't change any of its settings as it as a user-defined (i.e. not a default) task...

I hope you understand what I meant (ehm, I'm not the soberest at the moment )

Take care,
Vlk

[Lisandro]

The work around to the problem would be to create a new resident task (or more easily copy the default Resident Protection task), set it as the default task, change the settings you want, and start it. avast won't change any of its settings as it as a user-defined (i.e. not a default) task... Vlk

You mean that will be imposible to persist the changes in the default task or this is a bug that will be corrected?

[sowen]

Thanks Vlk. I tested your suggestions, and it's produced some interesting results, which may help zero-in on the bug.

If I copy the Resident Protection task, then I get exactly the same results:

• packer settings don't stick for anything other than the standard shield,
• changing the settings in the Enhanced interface always causes the slider in the blue 'a' icon for the standard shield to reset to the 'normal' position, and
• actions other than interactive/choose don't work

If I create a new task, then it works the way I would expect. That is:

• all the packer settings are persisted and restored correctly,
• if, for example, I use the Enhanced interface to adjust the settings to high, then the blue 'a' icon slider also gets set to high, and
• the actions  "repair iffailed move to chest" set on the 'virus' page in the Enhanced interface works!

So... I checked in the Avast4.mdb database, in the Local Properties table, and there are two properties listed as 'Invalid Entry' for the 'Resident Protection' task (in my table, they're table entries 21 and 22).

If you copy the Resident Protection task, then these invalid entries get copied. If you create a new resident task, then the entries are not included.

So the Avast4.mdb settings database appears to have some incorrect entries (these are only two of them, because if you remove the entries, only some of the problems go away).

The workaround, for now, is to create a new resident task, set it to default, and adjust the settings as desired.

Regards,
Scott.

[Vlk]

Thanks for the info. That should be enough for us to nail down the problem.

FYI the InvalidEntry fields are benign (at least are expected to be) - they're used to specify which providers are included in a task...
Edit: huh, you've just deleted the message about the InvalidEntries so this probably doesn't make any sense to other readers...


I'll keep you updated.


Thanks again,
Vlk

[sowen]

I deleted the message about invalid entries, and moved the text into my previous posting... it made for easier reading. But you were too quick and answered while I was making the changes.