Email scanning fix for Zone Alarm users

[terrell]

I have recently found that Zone Alarm (and some other firewalls) sometimes blocks Avast from scanning email by blocking certain ports on machines using the 127.0.0.1 interface.  This interface is also common to AVG Antivirus, and Norton may still use this type of routing, but it was used more predominantly in older versions of Norton Antivirus (and it sometimes caused difficulty for folks using Outlook Express).
To fix my problem, I went to the firewall settings.  In the "trusted" and the "internet" zones I check-marked the "allow incoming tcp ports".
In the "Ports" box, I typed "5100, 5101".  These are the ports that need opening.  More ports counting up from there may also be blocked, depending on the number of POP & SMTP mail servers used in the individual configuration.  You also may need to go into the Zone Alarm "Program Control" section and make sure "access" settings are enabled for the respective programs.  If the Avast program is absent, click the "add" button near the bottom right and browse to the Avast folder.  Select and Open the Avast program along with the "ashmaisv.exe" icon.  If you still have problems, reboot the machine and start the email wizard from the Windows Start Menu and select the manual settings.  Press the next button, and when you get to the email programs selection, make sure that you check "select all".  Finish-up and you should be in business!  If this does not work, try uninstalling the firewall and Avast, reinstalling and configuring Avast without any firewalls installed, then reinstall your firewall.  All of these solutions have worked for me.  I have read some negative responses to my first, hastily-written suggestions, but I have not read any other suggestions that have worked for my initial problem.  I like Avast, and feel it is a benefit to the antivirus market.  Keep up the good work!

[MHJ]

Well the suggestion you wrote might be correct but you can only get this problem with

a) a very old version of ZoneAlarm (and that's not for sure cause i don't know) or
b) if you don't give avast! .exe's access to the internet right after installing it by zonealarm as it has an automatic detection that a program wants to access the internet and you can choose YES or NO

If you select NO you don't have to wonder if avast! isn't working.

I saw many posts with this "problem" so far and the most of them are spamming the board with "I FOUND A MAJOR BUG!!!" etc. pp. which is very annoying as it costs a lot of support time!  

[Eddy]

Running Avast Home and ZoneAlarm Pro at home and Avast Pro and ZoneAlarm Pro at my store. Email scan works perfectly without having to change anything.

[Eddy]

Besides that. Port 5100 is unassigned and port 5101 is normally used by Talarian_TCP. I doubt it very much that Avast is using them.

[MHJ]

Running Avast Home and ZoneAlarm Pro at home and Avast Pro and ZoneAlarm Pro at my store. Email scan works perfectly without having to change anything.

That's because you pressed YES  
OK some ppl are beginners and post messages like this above but anyway it's annoying as other beginners maybe become afraid to ever use this software.

[vojtech]

Avast mail scanner does not use ports 5100 and 5101 unless you configured it in avast4.ini file. Do you use some other mail-related software ?

The mail scanner listens only on the local interface (127.0.0.1), so it does not require to allow accepting incoming connections from outside. I'm not sure if firewalls notify users about it or not.

[Grasshopper]

I received "send/receive" errors on a PC running Avast! trial version with Outlook XP, naming the 5100 & 5101 ports.  It was connected to a network running a Symantec security appliance.  There was no client access privilege granted to this particular PC, it was connected for internet access, with limited access to the rest of the network.   When Avast!was first set-up, the email account worked (two days).  The scanner also worked, but it all stopped working with the port errors.  On another PC, a notebook running Outlook Express, Courier and Zone Alarm,  I was never able to get the email scanner to work properly.  I granted TCP/IP access to the 5100 &5101 ports in the firewall and the email scanner started working.  I like this antivirus, and hope to purchase it for myself and many of my clients.