Avast 5.0.677+online armor 4.5

[medway01]

Hi,

Relative new user here, I've been using Avast for a few days now and like it very much, I did have some issues with my news and email readers but reading through the forums here solved those issues :-)

I have updated avast to the  5.0.677 version tonight and after a reboot I had no internet or lan connections, I removed avast, reinstalled but to no avail. I then had a look at online armor that I run, darn thing looked ok but deactivating the fire wall allowed lan and internet access, looking through online armors rules I noticed that Avastsvc.exe was blocked, it wasn't before I updated avast so I removed avast and reinstalled, updated and the same thing happened ! I changed the firewall rule to allow and all is well, no problems :-) So if anyone used online armor and updates avast and looses connection, have a look at the firewall rules first before trying anything, it may be a one off thing with my PC but I thought I would post here just in case.

Mart.

[Rednose]

Hi Mart, welcome to the forum

Greetz, Red.

[medway01]

Hi and thank you :-)

[DavidR]

Since you have done a program update some components will have changed so it is normal for a firewall to challenge changed processes. However, OA should ask rather than block (depends on your settings). So since this blocked without notification, I think you need to change your settings to notify rather than block without notification.

This can also occur even if avastSvc.exe is allowed, seen that in lots of firewalls.
So you should do the following as well - Check the firewall allows avastSvc.exe internet access ?
- If it does delete the entry for it and reconnect to the internet, this should force the firewall to ask permission again. You might also try putting your firewall into learning mode.

Welcome to the forums.

[SafeSurf]

Welcome to the forum medway01. 

What version of OA are you using?  Since you received the Avast block and noticed it, you did the correct thing by going into your FW and unblocking it and "Trusting" Avast and all it's components; unclick Hide Trusted to see what is in red = Blocked and right click it to change to Trust or Ask.  The next time you reboot (remember, OA recommends 2 reboots), IF you get a pop-up about anything pertaining to OA, click "Remember my decision," "Trust," and "Allow."

Let me know if you have any other questions pertaining to Avast and OA.  Thank you. 

[yongsua]

After I received notification that Avast had already updated its program and I just restarted my computer.After the restart,OA suddenly came out something and displayed that OA already blocked Avast to run its shield and I just clicked "Trust" and "Allow".After that,OA Firewall notification pop up and showed that Avast need to connect through the svchost.exe(If I did not remember wrongly)and I just clicked "Allow" and "Remember my decision".After all,I did not see the Avast icon at my task bar.I just try to clicked Avast!logo on my screen then only I saw Avast icon running at my task bar.Finally,I tried to restart my pc to ensure that Avast run correctly in my pc.Sorry for my poor English.

[SafeSurf]

@ yongsua,

So is Avast and OA working well together?  It sounds like you did the correct thing with the pop-up as I described above.  You should only get this pop-up once if you did it correctly.  If you get it again, read my post again and make sure you click "Trust," and "Remember my decision."

You can double check in OA if you did it correctly by seeing if anything is in red...if it is, then right click it and change it to "Trust" for Avast.

Your English is fine, by the way.    Welcome to the forum.

[yongsua]

Avast and OA work well in my PC.Actually my previous firewall was Comodo Firewall,it also worked well with Avast but I get an error message from Comodo firewall in twice.It displayed that "Sorry for the inconvenience cause" and terminated by itself.Besides Comodo Firewall also asked me either to send an error report or not and I chose not to send it because I felt that I should give OA a try.So I uninstalled Comodo and installed OA.So far I don't have any issue from OA.

[medway01]

Hi,

Thanks for all the replies, lots of advice here to pick through ! So far Avast and Online armor ( version 4.5.0.234 ) are working fine together :-) My experience with both programs is a little limited as I have moved from a well known security suite to individual programs, just a choice for me because even though I have a full subscription to the suite some of the reviews I have read leave me wondering just how good it is, now I believe that individual programs may be better because they are dedicated for that task, rather than a suite made from bits bolted together, thats just my view point.

I did have some problems with email scanning, I tried a few fixes and some of the suggestions I have read here but I had to remove avast with the cleaning tool and re install it, that fixed it. Another issue was with my newsreader, its connections ran pretty slower with mail guard on, full speed with it off so for now I have just un ticked scan NNTP traffic. I need OT read up on the mail scanner a little more to understand it.

The firewall blocking Avast wast a big issue, it just had me fooled because its a long time since I have used a dedicated firewall, I had to remember it uses rules ! I guess online armor should have popped up a request to allow or deny instead of making a rule to block avast.

Thanks again for the replies :-)

Mart.

[SafeSurf]

@ yongsua,  Good to hear that Avast and OA are playing well together.   

@ medway01/Mart, So does it seem now that Avast and OA are playing well on your machine now?  Everyone's machine is different.   Now you know a few tips as well. 

Let me know if you have any other questions.  Thank you.

[medway01]

Hi,

So far it seems that Avast and OA are working together. I am still exploring both so may mess up at any time :-) luckily if things go wrong I have a backup image to revert too. I haven't noticed much of a hit on performance running windows 7 or at boot up, I have a dual core 2.33 CPU and 2 gigs of ram.

That said, there is little slow down with thunderbird maybe because of mail scanning, that seems a good trade off though. Firefox maybe cause I have WOT and Rapport installed though I have excluded both in Avast real time scanner.

I do have malwarebyes running too, I dint know if thats a good thing or not but it all bolts together OK so far :-) I am trying to provide different layers of protection in the hope it may surpass the combine suites, sort of the best of everything, more so after my expanse of a bad infection recently.

Thanks for replying,

Mart.

[SafeSurf]

I also believe in having layers of defense.  If it didn't save you in the past, it might some day in the future. 

[medway01]

Sorry, its too Early in the morning for good spelling, I meant:

> Experience from a bad infection !! <

sorry for the typo.
--
mart

[SafeSurf]

No problem.  Everyone learns from their mistakes. 

[medway01]

Hi,

Mistakes, so very true  A mistake was how my view changed to computer protection, I relied on a all in one suite on all the computers, one of them behaved oddly but scans never showed anything, I used malwarebytes and it picked up a few so I then used Avast on another PC, scanned the infected drive and Avast picked up a one the suite had missed. By then the 'bug' had worked its way to my HTPC, rather than try and clean it I reloaded the back up image but I lost a fair amount of files though. I thought this thing must have come either through IM or a flash drive or email but it may have come from an infected website, most of the people I know don't believe a website can infect a PC and neither did I until I had reason to read about it, by then, its too late :-(

After that I went searching for alternative AV products, that led me to read about tests and reviews and I was surprised that the suite I used had it faults. Its easy to go to a store and buy a suit, use it and sit back and believe it does its job without user input or tweaking its settings. Now I think layers may work better, a good AV, firewall, HIPS and a few browser add on's that work.

--
Mart.