Author Topic: Avast 4.8 and Outpost Firewall 2008 incompatibilty issue  (Read 4280 times)

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Spulci

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Avast 4.8 and Outpost Firewall 2008 incompatibilty issue
« on: March 30, 2008, 08:11:23 PM »
Hi,

latest version of Avast 4.8 blocks own registry values modification for security reason. As you might know, to use Outpost Firewall 2008 you'll have to set the Start REG_DWORD value to 4 (decimal) instead of 1 under the aswTdi regkey.

Any idea on how to fix this problem? Previous versions allowed registry modification. Maybe you'll have to fix the installation routine to check if Outpost Firewall is installed.

Best regards

Simon

Offline lukor

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Re: Avast 4.8 and Outpost Firewall 2008 incompatibilty issue
« Reply #1 on: March 30, 2008, 08:41:01 PM »
Hi,
for me the best thing would be an Outpost Firewall update with a fix for this strange conflict.

However, you may as well uninstall the Network Shield provider.

Lukas

Spulci

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Re: Avast 4.8 and Outpost Firewall 2008 incompatibilty issue
« Reply #2 on: March 30, 2008, 08:49:03 PM »
Hi,
for me the best thing would be an Outpost Firewall update with a fix for this strange conflict.

However, you may as well uninstall the Network Shield provider.

Lukas

I agree with you....and I really hope that Agnitum will fix Outpost in a short time. Meanwhile they state how to fix the registry during the installation process in their installer Wizard: "please edit this registry key under..." etc.

Could you please tell me how to uninstall the Network Shield provider? Do I find an option to remove it from the uninstaller routine?

Best regards

Simon

Offline lukor

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Re: Avast 4.8 and Outpost Firewall 2008 incompatibilty issue
« Reply #3 on: March 30, 2008, 08:57:18 PM »
Yes, just go to the Control Panel / Add-Remove programs, choose avast! antivirus and click the Change/Remove button.

Avast setup app will apear, choose Change and click Next, un-check Network Shield provider and finish the wizard by clicking Next.

A reboot will be needed afterwards to unload the driver.

L.

Offline DavidR

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Re: Avast 4.8 and Outpost Firewall 2008 incompatibilty issue
« Reply #4 on: March 30, 2008, 08:59:08 PM »
@ Lukor
There are now an increasing number of post in the forums about this and the outpostfirewal.com forums also have a number of topics related to this and have even made one sticky as it must be cropping up.
http://outpostfirewall.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22529

Suggesting that they fix the problem doesn't unfortunately seem to do much, have both companies even spoken on this. It doesn't seem that Agnitum have as they have only come up with the disable the aswTdi driver, to the detriment of avast users.

Does the aswTdi driver not have any impact on the web shield ?
e.g. if disabled would this also disable the web shield ?

@ Spulci
If as suggested by lukor, uninstalling the Network Shield doesn't work with the compatibility issue in OP 2008 (they may just find the presence of avast and just throw up the compatibility window), manually editing the registry will require temp disabling avasts self-protection.

avast 4.8 has a self-protection built in and that may be what is stopping you making the modification, It can be switched off, Program Settings, Troubleshooting, check the 'Disable avast! self-defence module' and click OK before trying to do any mods.

I haven't a clue why Agnitum have done this there is talk that they thing the web shield is a firewall which is rubbish. What I can't understand is why other firewalls are quite happy with the aswTdi driver (Comodo, Online Armor, Zone Alarm, PC Tools), but Outpost can't.

I have a life subscription for Outpost Pro and this issue is one of the things that stop me upgrading to OP Pro 2008.

I don't know if Agnitum have contacted Alwil about this (I'm just an avast user) to explain why they feel this warrants the disabling of of the aswTdi driver.
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Offline Vlk

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Re: Avast 4.8 and Outpost Firewall 2008 incompatibilty issue
« Reply #5 on: March 30, 2008, 09:05:11 PM »
They never contacted us about the issue. But quite some people actually keep asking us what's the problem, really (even prior to avast 4.8 release).
But we (Alwil) don't basically know. aswTdi shouldn't conflict with anything, it is quite a well-behaved network filter driver with no known side-effects on the ecosystem.

I think it's time for Agnitum to try a bit harder and resolve the issue on their side (with our help, if needed).


Vlk
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Spulci

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Re: Avast 4.8 and Outpost Firewall 2008 incompatibilty issue
« Reply #6 on: March 30, 2008, 09:06:05 PM »

@ Spulci
If as suggested by lukor, uninstalling the Network Shield doesn't work with the compatibility issue in OP 2008 (they may just find the presence of avast and just throw up the compatibility window), manually editing the registry will require temp disabling avasts self-protection.

avast 4.8 has a self-protection built in and that may be what is stopping you making the modification, It can be switched off, Program Settings, Troubleshooting, check the 'Disable avast! self-defence module' and click OK before trying to do any mods.

I haven't a clue why Agnitum have done this there is talk that they thing the web shield is a firewall which is rubbish. What I can't understand is why other firewalls are quite happy with the aswTdi driver (Comodo, Online Armor, Zone Alarm, PC Tools), but Outpost can't.

I have a life subscription for Outpost Pro and this issue is one of the things that stop me upgrading to OP Pro 2008.

I don't know if Agnitum have contacted Alwil about this (I'm just an avast user) to explain why they feel this warrants the disabling of of the aswTdi driver.

I've got a paid subscription for Outpost PF 2008 and I've just email Agnitum to invite them to fix this incompatibility issue. Btw I gave them a link to this discussion. It's absolutely strange to see that they suggest to disable a security feature to their user base to make their product compatible with a third part software.

Let's see what happens!

Best regards

Simon

Offline lukor

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Re: Avast 4.8 and Outpost Firewall 2008 incompatibilty issue
« Reply #7 on: March 30, 2008, 09:22:49 PM »
Hi DavidR,
Network Shield indeed has no connection with WebShield what so ever. In early stages of 4.5 the redirect feature was implemented in aswtdi.sys driver, but later we have moved this functionality into a separate driver aswRdr.sys (also a TDI filter). I understand that a firewall wants to be in control and hence it might fight for some resources or the load order (firewall may want to load as early as possible) with other similar drivers (like TDI filters). TDI is a kernel API for communication with the network, so any driver can, with the help of TDI api, send and receive data from kernel and this communication can be difficult for a firewall to stop in certain situations. However, Network shield is not sending or receiving any data on it's own. It just very quickly peeks into some of the bytes on some of the ports for signatures of known worms. In most cases it just silently forwards all network requests just as if it wasn't there - e.g. outgoing connections are simply ignored altogether.

If as suggested by lukor, uninstalling the Network Shield doesn't work with the compatibility issue in OP 2008 (they may just find the presence of avast and just throw up the compatibility window), manually editing the registry will require temp disabling avasts self-protection.


Uninstalling should remove the registry entry completely, so hopefully Outpost will remain in silence.

To sum up, these issues can be tricky - it may be a compatibility problem that requires changes on both sides. If anyone from Outpost is reading this or is reading the Outpost forum where I also posted, we may surely cooperate to eliminate this annoyance.

Offline DavidR

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Re: Avast 4.8 and Outpost Firewall 2008 incompatibilty issue
« Reply #8 on: March 30, 2008, 10:34:02 PM »
Thanks for the update Lukor, there certainly mus be a more gracious way that suggesting people disable the aswTdi driver, after all there are no complaints about it from other firewalls, so it has to make you wonder what it is that OP 2008 is doing.
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Offline lukor

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Re: Avast 4.8 and Outpost Firewall 2008 incompatibilty issue
« Reply #9 on: April 18, 2008, 03:34:03 PM »
According to Agnitum team, this issue will be fixed in the next release of Outpost FW, in the version with build number: 2313.

Spulci

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Re: Avast 4.8 and Outpost Firewall 2008 incompatibilty issue
« Reply #10 on: April 18, 2008, 03:43:33 PM »
According to Agnitum team, this issue will be fixed in the next release of Outpost FW, in the version with build number: 2313.

Great news; their development team stated the same last week when I opened a support request as OPF registred user.

Many thanks to Alwil for supporting avast-OPF user in this issue.

Best regards

Simon

Offline DavidR

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Re: Avast 4.8 and Outpost Firewall 2008 incompatibilty issue
« Reply #11 on: April 18, 2008, 05:51:40 PM »
According to Agnitum team, this issue will be fixed in the next release of Outpost FW, in the version with build number: 2313.

Excellent, almost an admission that avast! was doing nothing wrong when the fix will be in OPF. Perhaps then I will update my existing version.

Was there any mention as to what the problem was or was it just one of they thought it might conflict so they wanted it disabled ?
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Offline lukor

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Re: Avast 4.8 and Outpost Firewall 2008 incompatibilty issue
« Reply #12 on: April 18, 2008, 07:42:32 PM »
It seems their driver was not prepared to coexist with other TDI driver loaded. I don't know much details, but as I understand it now it seems like a simple bug in the code.

Offline DavidR

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Re: Avast 4.8 and Outpost Firewall 2008 incompatibilty issue
« Reply #13 on: April 18, 2008, 08:08:26 PM »
Thanks for the update.
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