Avast 5, build 507

Hi David.

Thank you for the recap. The upgrade was offered to me through Avast updater today so I accepted it, and it went smoothly. I am very pleased with this new version. It is really light on my system load and it has been working flawlessly since I found out how to make it work with Comodo without any Alerts. Still, when booting the PC the red circle with white X and the yellow triangle that shows on the sys try icon before Avast secured the PC is a little unnerving. The only thing that makes me sad is that I read somewhere that this version could check web base e-mails (not using a third mail prog like Outlook or Thunderbird), but signing in to Gmail or Hotmail and I can not make it work not matter what I do. Well may be in the Pro paid version, or I misunderstood the article I read. One question though. Should I stop the e-mail shield and service? I always download files to a special folder where I scan all the files before I open them.

Regards.

Hernan wrote: "when booting the PC the red circle with white X and the yellow triangle that shows on the sys try icon before Avast secured is a little unnerving..."

I rarely see the red circle with white X... but yes, I regularly encounter the yellow triangle with exclamation point.   While not pleasing, we have learned the explanation:   that two of avast's shields... specifically, the mail shield and web(??) shield... which run through services... are waiting for their services to start.   Apparently, that's the way avast intends things.

Personally, I wait for those two shields to finish loading, before i open any browser (or other net-based) program.

As for online e-mail services  (Gmail, HotMail, Yahoo, &etc.), I would presume that an appropriate avast module (web shield??  network shield??? or if nothing else, the resident shield) would scan online e-mail attachments as they are being accessed/opened, and hopefully intercept any malware before it can get into one's system.

I occasionally use Outlook (or Outlook Express), so I keep the e-mail shield on.  

Question:  If you were to disable the e-mail shield/service, would avast then offer the yellow triangle with exclamation point continually (as a reminder)??  If so, I'd rather keep it enabled... and wait the few seconds for it to get initialized... than be confronted with the triangle perpetually.

I rarely see the red circle with white X... but yes, I regularly encounter the yellow triangle with exclamation point.   While not pleasing, we have learned the explanation:   that two of avast's shields... specifically, the mail shield and web(??) shield... which run through services... are waiting for their services to start.   Apparently, that's the way avast intends things. Personally, I wait for those two shields to finish loading, before i open any browser (or other net-based) program.

Unfortunately, sometimes I see the red circle and white X, and I always get the yellow triangle. May be because I have too many services starting up at booting time at the same time. Anyway I do not open the browser either until the PC finishes booting up and Avast and SS updates completely. You are correct by saying "that is the way avast intends things". Nevertheless, those 5 seconds or so for Avast to load all its shields are nerve-racking:emotion-7: 

Question:  If you were to disable the e-mail shield/service, would avast then offer the yellow triangle with exclamation point continually (as a reminder)??  If so, I'd rather keep it enabled... and wait the few seconds for it to get initialized... than be confronted with the triangle perpetually.

That is true. I forgot. If a shield is stop, Avast will display the yellow triangle saying that the PC is not secured. Thank you for remind me that fact.

@ Moderators and Forum personal: I did not see "Christopher" when signing in today, a relief:emotion-21:, but still the speed of this new Forum is painfully slow. It takes a couple of seconds for the top bar with the links to load. I took me almost a whole minute to sign in, and more than a minute to post this. I would not want to be in any  member´s shoes who are still using dial-up:emotion-9:

"May be because I have too many services starting up at booting time at the same time".

I use WinPatrol to try to minimize my startup programs & services.   Certainly, the more things that auto-run on startup, the slower your bootup will be.   You'd think though, that avast (i.e., an antivirus) might be able to "tweak" things to get its stuff run before other services...

"those 5 seconds or so for Avast to load all its shields..."

wow, 5 whole seconds... we should have the avast writers arrested for that :emotion-5:

re:  christopher,   1) the matter is more common than we realized... in fact, it may be impacting EVERYONE.   (I've now seen SEVERAL users mentioning it).  in fact,

2) it just happened to me again, so i don't believe it's (fully) fixed.

You can avoid the warning triangle when disabling shields.  On the main page go to Settings in the upper right hand corner.   Select Status Bar - you can then disable the monitoring of specific actions by unchecking the boxes.  

Hi maryam.

Thank you. Good catch. I must be getting old. I did not remember that Avast Status Bar Setting.

IROC9555, glad I could help.  About the old thing - it sure can't be your age, if that were the case I would have never found it!:emotion-7:  That annoying triangle is a great little motivator. 

the 5 seconds is the figure Hernan (Iroc5555) mentioned earlier in this thread, in reference to his problem.  

ky331, I did not want automatic updates and the IM shield, and the triangle remained constantly.  That was why I changed those particular actions in the status bar.  It wasn't a case of 5 seconds - the triangle was always there.  Since I prefer to be notified about the updates and I don't have IM on my computer I chose to disable the monitoring.  I'm not sure what you mean about 5 seconds.  I do have that at start up - no biggy.  It was when the triangle remained that I made the changes.

"That annoying triangle is a great little motivator".

Keep in mind that we're talking about 5 seconds (give or take) of annoyance... vs. the possibility that, upon disabling notification, we may no longer be notified in the event of a real problem.

by analogy, if your smoke alarm sometimes goes off when you're broiling meat in your kitchen --- an obvious annoyance --- would it be prudent to take the batteries out of your smoke alarm, to keep it from (ever) going off in the future???

Perhaps, if you say you'll NEVER be accessing the mail shield, and disable the shield/service, then you might be able to get away with also disabling the notification.   just be sure to remember what you did... next year... when you suddenly decide you're gonna check something in Outlook/Express.   I'd rather keep everything on... and take comfort from the yellow triangle... that avast is accurately monitoring/doing its job.

Maryam.

Ky331 and I were talking about the security triangle over the Avast icon when the PC is booted. Those are the 5 seconds, well almost like 10. Afterward I mentioned that since I do not use a third party Mail prog and Avast seems not to check web base mail by themselves that if it would be a good idea to stop the mail shield and service since one of the causes for the unsecure triangle to show up is to wait for mail and web services to activate. That is when Ky mentioned the triangle would be constantly displayed and I suppose that is when you pointed out that the security triangle can be override in Status Bar Settings. However, all these is hypothetically speaking since I am not going to stop the mail service. I have learned that when services and programs are stop to activate as they were conceived, The log viewer starts to fill with red and yellow errors and warnings, and I like to have my log event viewer clean.

Thank you again for the tip on the status bar.   

You're welcome.  I was just trying to help out when I read that you wanted to disable a shield.  I do get a big red warning on the summary page about not having automatic updates.  I really wasn't trying to recommend anything that would be harmful.