email problems, new installation of Avast!5 Pro

[lbyler]

Hello all.

Avast! newbie here.  I got tired of Kaspersky's foibles, so when my license expired I bought Pro (5.?) earlier today (12 March) and installed it.  It seemed to work, except that incoming e-mail failed to arrive.

The most recent topic regarding e-mail is dated 1 March, and has no responses.  Earlier related topics asked why this old chestnut was being rehashed yet again.  I respond:  Perhaps because it's still a problem?

Details:
OS is Win XP SP3
I use the Thunderbird (2.0.0.23) e-mail client.  I do not use web-based e-mail.
Incoming:  pop.att.yahoo.com, port 110, Use TLS if available.
Outgoing:  smtp.att.yahoo.com, port 587, No secure connection

I could send mail, but could not receive it.  The Get Mail did not fail, it just did nothing.  The status bar indicated "Connecting" — forever.

In the following scenarios, I sent a test message to myself after each step.  The message was sent, but never arrived.
I tried everything I could in Mail Shields.
I tried unchecking all checks (Incoming, Outgoing, News).  No change.
I tried Stopping it for ten minutes.  It stopped, but still no mail arrived.
I pushed the Start button again, but Avast showed no sign of detecting that.  And the Start button was still showing.
I looked for a way to shut down Avast (you can do that with Kaspersky), if only to test the theory that it was the cause of the e-mail problem.  There isn't one.  No UI to exit, no application to terminate with Task Manager.  And when I tried to terminate the Avast process in TM, it refused.

So it seems the only way to get rid of it is to uninstall it.  So I did.  As soon as I rebooted, a pent-up flood of e-mail (including all my test messages) arrived.

I bought Avast primarily because of its glowing reviews on the TopTenReviews site.  Before I file a dispute on the credit card payment, I'd like to see if anyone can suggest what I might be doing wrong and how to fix it.  If you need more system information than I provided, let me know.

TIA

[sded]

Uncheck "Use TLS if available".  Avast! takes care of setting up your secure links.

[lbyler]

Thank you sded.  That was all it took.

I did see a reference somewhere (forget whether it was here or in Avast Help) that said to disable SSL.  Since SSL is a T-Bird option, but I had checked TLS (if available), I assumed I was OK.

I am glad it was so easy.  I wish all such problems were.

Thanks again.

[sded]

Glad it worked for you.     There really needs to be something in the FAQs like for the webmail discussion, and a big sticky for this one.

[Zyndstoff (aka Steven Gail)]

+1

Yes, not enough guidance for many users how to properly set that up. This MUST be added somewhere prominent in the GUI, like an "Email Client Setup Help"-Button on the Web-Shield page.

[DavidR]

Perhaps it is time to re-introduce the avast email-wizard that was in 4.8 for those win9.x, winME users whose email account settings had to be modified to use the avast email proxy, etc.

[Jon_T]

There really needs to be something in the FAQs like for the webmail discussion, and a big sticky for this one.

+2 and include The Mail Shield may not scan some e-mails