The basics: OS = 98SE, Outlook Express ver. 6, ZoneAlarm firewall (free), SpyBot S&D(free), Spyware Blaster, Ad Aware, Cookie Manager, Pest Scan, RegSupreme (trial), Registry Tuneup (trial), Registry Pruner, HiJack This, CW Shredder, and AVG.

I installed AVG sometime around mid-July and it really impressed me. Actually I had no exprience to compare it to (I had never before had any "full-time" anti-virus software installed and just relied on periodic scans by McAfee, Panda, etc. for protection) but AVG was so easy to in-stall, configure and use that I felt it hard for anything else to out-perform it.

Not content to leave well enough alone and having too much free-time, I decided to try the Kerio firewall, I did a /clean uninstall of ZoneAlarm and started the install of Kerio, early in the process I ran afoul of something and the blue screens started ( I hadn't had a blue screen in years). From that point on it was like dealing with a barrelful of Medusas in a room full of Hydras.

After a lot of Safe-Mode,... Step by step confirmation,... MSconfig,...you know the drill, I was finally back up and operating. No firewall tho...so I went back to ZoneAlarm, at least I was familiar with it. AVG had become corrupted somewhere along the way, so I uninstalled and reinstalled AVG.

And now we get to the present, and the problem: AVG has not been doing it's job, my first clue was when I noted that the confirmation notices on my e-mail; "Incoming mail is certified virus free, checked by....etc." were no longer on my incoming and outgoing mail. I went back thru my "Sent Items" and "Deleted Items" and determined that the certifications had stopped about the time that I reinstalled AVG. Certification is enabled for both incoming and outgoing mail. The AVG Virus Vault hasn't shown an entry in days whereas it had been reporting 1or 2 a day. The panel that reports how many contacts of various sorts all showed 0 the last time I saw it, now I cant even find it. Another panel which shows the POP and SMTP port numbers was reporting them as being ports 5000 and 5001 whereas my POP and SMTP ports in Outlook Express are ports 25 and 110. I was modifying them in AVG and that panel disappeared, I haven't by able to find that panel since. During the reinstall, it was going to let me generate an AVG Rescue Disk, that opportunity was never offered to me.

Ther's more, but it all doesn't come to mind at present, hopefully I have presented enough information for someone to determine what the problem is. If the resolution of this situation involves an uninstall, can anyone tell me, is there a"/clean" switch that can be added to the uninstall command?, if so how and where? Just today, after "bailing" on Kerio days ago and thinking it had been fully uninstalled, I was mucking about in the registry and ran across remnants of Kerio which then took a few hous to ferret out and destroy.

Well, there it is ,or at least some of it, hopefully enough so that someone can provide some meaningful advice or help. Thanks for your time.
Harshale

You may have something that has disabled AVG. Try running online scans:

http://www.pestscan.com/
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

Greetings k027,
I run PestScan every day as one part of my routine security check. I also ran housecall.etc. as you suggested. Both came up with clean reports. PestScan, by the way, still reports as it has for months, CWS.GoogleMS.3 as a hi-jacker which it indeed is, but that's another issue entirely.

I am as certain as one can be in these situations, that the problem is based on the fact that AVG is configured to monitor ports 5000 and 5001 for in-coming and out-going e-mail and naturally it is not able to check the e-mail traffic because it is coming and going by means of ports 25 and 110. Avg is "standing guard" at 2 ports that are not being used for e-mail.
I have tested this theory in the following fashion; When a known virus carrier, specifically; the bogus, look-a-like Microsoft Critical Security Up-Date shows up in my Inbox I have AVG inspect it and Avg reports it as carrying a virus. Now if AVG was monitoring ports 25 and 110, the bogus up-date would have been detected at the door and put in the AVG Virus Vault. That's what it used to do before the crash and subsequent re-install.

Let me refer back to my initial post in this matter and elaborate on part of it. I reported a dialogue panel dealing with AVG configurations, there were 2 boxes of particular relevance to this discussion; they contained the following information about the e-mail ports; 1 box; 25 -> 5000 new, the second box; 110 -> 5001 new. At or near the bottom of the dialogue box was a button "Modify". Knowing that the 5000 and 5001 were inconsistent with the port configuration of my Outlook Express I selected one of the 2 boxes and hit Modify and then changed the box content to; 5000 -> 25 new, I then selected the 2nd box, hit Modify and was in the process of changing the content to read; 5001 -> 110 new, whatever happened it happened before I could hit Apply or whatever was necessary to be done in order to establish or confirm these new correct port values, the dialogue panel disappeared, thereby leaving AVG guarding the wrong ports.

I have not been able locate this dialogue panel again, another area of this panel also carried information about the number of virus detections, various other stats, etc. Hoping that it would come up again as part of a fresh installation of AVG, I did an uninstall/reinstall of AVG...No use I've not been able to resurrect that panel.

Do you recognize the panel from my description? And if so, do you know how I can once again access that panel. I am certain that the resolution of this problem will be effected by getting properly configured by means of that panel.

Thank you for your reply. I hope you have the patience and the time to continue your efforts on my behalf. Again, Thank You, Harshale


_______________________________________
NOTE FROM FORUM HOSTS: This thread is now closed. Should you need it reopened, please PM a Host/mod. Everyone else having a similar issue, please launch a new topic for yourselves. Thank you.