Mail Shield Problem - 10053 Errors on outbound messages

[adamkirvan]

Hi,

I'm having a problem with my Avast Free V7 install.

I use an accounting program to send statements to my customers, it uses my ISP's SMTP server and sends (obviously) on port 25.

If the Mail Shield is disabled, I can't send any emails from it, I get a socket error 10053, however, if it's enabled it works fine.

I then noticed that if I go into:

Real-Time Shields > Mail Shield
Expert Settings > SSL Accounts

And the account (a non-SSL account) is not specified in here, mail sending does not work. This is the same even if Avast! is uninstalled. Exact error message we get from the application is "Error during call to send() DATA:-1 -10053", which is a windows socket error. I also noticed that Outlook takes an extremely long time to send. If I add the entry under SSL Accounts again, the error disappears.

This means that Avast can never be uninstalled, as when it is, the socket error 10053 appears. This problem only occurred since installing Avast.

Is this something you have heard of before? And if so, can you recommend a fix? To me, it definitely looks like a bug with Avast.

Have tried all the usual things such as Winsock Reset, etc. Computer is running Windows XP Pro.

Thanks,

Adam

[adamkirvan]

and yes you read that right. When it's ENABLED everything works fine, but when it's DISABLED it doesn't work, and that includes when you try and uninstall Avast. No other security software - Windows Firewall disabled.
Avast has been upgraded and has been on this PC since version 4.