snip


I'm still working at a solution from Avast.
I don't think the "third party support specialist" has ever been on a
newsgroup.
So, I'm trying to walk him/her (Vojta Nekvapil) through that first. :-(
Mikek

Hmmm. You would think that they would have someone there who understood
usenet access, considering that there is a specific section of the
program,
complete with controls and on / off switches, for newsgroup virus checking
... d :-\

Arfa

That may (likely) found at third level tech support, if it exists and you
can get there. Generally first level is a robot (program or human).

?-/

I'm really not quite sure what is going on with Avast! at the moment. I have
had it on every machine here since it came out, and have never had the
slightest problem with it either missing viruses and other bad-arsed stuff,
or with it interacting badly with any operating system that I've had it
running on, or any internet, usenet or mail access programs that I've had
running. Now all these problems with usenet have started - and there seems
to be quite a few people suffering - and also, a few times in the last few
weeks, I have also had a problem - but only intermittently - with sending
mail. Using Thunderbird or Windoze Live Mail, when you try to send a mail,
you get an almost immediate error message spouting some garbage about the
server responding with an invalid greeting, or some such. You can try and
try resending, but nothing will persuade that mail to fly. Until, that is,
you do the "Switch off shields for 10 minutes" option in Avast! As soon as
you do that, and click "retry", off it goes, good as gold. Happened to me
yesterday afternoon. Turned off Avast! then no problem. And here we are a
few hours later, and I just sent a few emails from Thunderbird, with Avast!
fully switched on, and they all flew without problem. And no, the machine
has not been powered down, restarted or otherwise rebooted in the interim.
Strange ...

Arfa