Troubleshooting

Changing the settings on this page may help to resolve certain specific problems. However, these settings should not be changed without good reason. If in doubt, please contact AVAST Software first.

  • Enable rootkit scan on system startup – Normally avast! scans for rootkits whenever the operating system is restarted. Uncheck this box if you do not want this scan to be carried out whenever your system is restarted.
  • Enable raw disk access during avast! boot-time scan – During a boot-time scan, avast! uses a special method to access the raw data on the hard disk, to check for any viruses that may be hidden there.
  • Skip checking of digital signatures of infected files – to prevent false positive alerts, avast! checks files for digital signatures. If a file is detected as suspicious, but also contains a valid digital signature of a trusted authority, it is likely to be a false positive. In this case the file will not be reported as suspicious. If this box is checked, all suspicious files will be reported, including those with valid digital signatures.
  • Enable avast! self-defense module – Some viruses deliberately target antivirus software and try to switch it off by deleting or modifying critical files. avast! contains self-defense features that prevent such attacks by blocking the operation. Uncheck this box to turn off the self-defense, thus enabling such files to be deleted.
  • Load avast! services only after loading other system services – The avast! service is normally loaded quite early in the boot process. Sometimes this can cause problems when loading other system services e.g. the system may appear to “freeze” temporarily after starting. Checking this box will delay the loading of avast! services until after the other system services are loaded.

Redirect Settings

These settings allow you to specify which ports are used for your email and web communication, if the standard ports are not used. This is important to ensure that your emails and web browsing are monitored by avast!, regardless of which ports are used.

For the web, avast! normally expects all communication to take place through port 80 and everything else is ignored. If you use a proxy server to access the internet and you want the communications between the proxy server and your computer to be scanned, you should enter the port which is used to connect to the proxy server. You should only enter the ports for HTTP traffic, not for ICQ, DC++ etc. For mail, the default ports are the standard port numbers for the four basic email protocols. If you use a different port (or ports), they should be entered here. Multiple port numbers should be separated by commas.

  • Ignored addresses – here you can enter server addresses or ports that you want to exclude from scanning.
  • Ignore local communication – if this is checked, avast! will not scan communication between applications running on your computer. Unchecking this box will result in local communications being scanned, which may slow down your computer slightly.

Troubleshooting