OT-ish Anyone had trouble recently with Avast screwing with usenet access ?

See the post above from Lee regarding going into the Avast troubleshooting section, and removing port 119 from the NNTP checker. I have done this, and it has now allowed me to turn the mail shield back on for both incoming and outgoing mail, whilst leaving usenet access alone, and removing the problem. So that's a good interim fix, but as you say, it would be useful to know what the real problem is so that usenet checking can be reinstated.

Arfa

I did the change suggested by Lee and it works fine, I also undid the change and in the Mail Shield section I clicked on "Expert Settings" in there I unchecked the box that says; "scan newsgroup messages (NNTP)" This also works, Is one method preferable to the other? Mikek

Hi Arfa,

no I haven't cleared the problem up. I had a look at Avast and turned off the real time mail scanning thing, then thought better of it and turned it back on again.

To be honest, this is not enough of a problem for me to mess with turning bits of the antivirus off. I expect eventually some upgrade will sort things out for me. I've only come across 2 threads where I noticed this anomaly, funnily enough, this being one of them! (Hence my initial belief it was a gag)

Btw, my symptoms are identical to the spoof reply I posted - the first four (Marks, Rich's, Ron's and Lee's) replies all appear identical to my spoof one, all others in the thread are normal.

Cheers!

Gareth.

I sent our troubleshooting and solutions to Avast this morning. Maybe on their next iteration they will fix it. BTW, I installed my version on 11-3-11 I see a new version came out

OTOH; Virginmedia have been sending me emails telling me they've upgraded certain aspects of the broadband without corresponding price increases - maybe they've quietly increased the retention of their binary servers to what Xnews can't handle!

My mate who works for them, told me that they were about to double speeds a couple of weeks ago. Over the last few days, I have received around 10 emails from them, some being repeats, saying all sorts of contradictory things. There seems to have been a massive balls-up on who gets what email, as a few of them have been apologies for wrongly sent emails regarding speed changes, and telling me to ignore what was said, and that I would be receiving good news regarding my speed in the next two weeks.

Arfa

It is strange indeed. You don't really have to turn the Mail Shield off properly. Just select the "disable for 10 minutes" option to check if it cures the problem. It just automatically reinstates itself after that period of time.

Arfa

I really don't understand computers to the necessary depth to say if one method of fixing this behaviour is preferable to the other. I'm sure Adrian or Lee or Rich might know. One of you lads care to comment ? As to the version of Avast that I am running, it was put on when I took over this machine, and it had W7 put on it, about 19 months ago now. I always install any program updates that Avast says it has waiting, so it should be fully up to date. If you right-click on the tray icon, and then open the "About Avast" window, it will tell you the current version that you have. Mine says that it is

Arfa

I received one "Oops we're sorry we accidentally sent you an email" email, when they hadn't actually sent me any emails.

How funny.

I'm actually very happy with my Virgin broadband, I'm on a 10MB package, and most times I bother to do a broadband speed test, its in the 9MB and beyond range. Right now I've just got 9.6.

Gareth.

I got an apologies for error email too.

And even if they did double my speed, they'd only cap my downloads for 12h like they usually do if I actually used it!

I'm trying to get headers in Xnews now, the previous attempt with the sliders pretty close together resulted in headers way back months into last year but not making it up to today, I've moved the start slider nearer to the end slider and double checked the end slider is endstopped - its up to

I've just had another weird thing happen on another newsgroup. One thread I opened had the same kind of post just repeated by everyone and no actual replies, but that post had come from the previous thread I had been reading.

I've now turned off the newsgroup scanning in Avast, and every post I now open in that mangled thread appears to be OK, though the mangled ones I've already opened do not get fixed. (presumably because they are now just sitting mangled on my hard drive).

Cheers,

Gareth.

Simplest would probably to just turn off Newsgroup checking in the Mail Shield | Expert Settings | Main Settings. I can't remember the last time I saw any malware distributed via Usenet, although I'd guess that the "special" binary groups may have some infected files and/or trojans.

One thing you may want to try is to load WireShark (nee Etherial) and examine the dialog when you attempt to connect to the news server. That can give you some insight as to where the problem may be and what may be blocking that port.

Thanks. I searched all through the program looking for my version and couldn't find it. I have the same version you do. Mikek

Same version here, except it auto updated about half an hour ago and now definition set is 120115-1.

Gareth.

Likewise. My 20 does just about that most of the time. Right now, 19.183 down and 1.950 up.

Arfa

Avast responded, and I gave them the ask for information.

It is not just one *newsgroup that this problem happens in.

Here is the group where I found another Avast user started a thread wondering about the problem. >>>> sci.electronics.repair could you send us the ling for the newsgroup? Thank >

So what exactly is their response ? Is the matter closed as far as they are concerned ? Or does that mean that they are investigating ?

Arfa

I posted everything they sent, I wondered about that line, Status: Closed, but as far as I know they are just now getting started with learning about the problem. I'll keep the thread informed with what more I learn. Mikek

OK, that would be good. If it takes too long, and this thread disappears too far out of sight, can you start a new thread with the results, or failing that, mail me direct off-group using the address that this was posted from ?

Thanks

Arfa