Prevent avast 4 aspnet_wp.exe smtp timeout

I use avast 4 (home) for my virus protection. I frequently found that when running an ASP.NET application locally that sent mail via an external SMTP address, avast would get in the way and either slow the process down to a crawl, or cause a timeout and prevent the mail from going out. My temporary solution was to simply disable outbound email scanning while I was doing some local debugging.

Today I had a few minutes and thought I would find a more permanent solution. I dug through the various options in the Internet Mail scanner section, but didn't find anything that seemed to apply. I could choose to not scan by port or IP, but this external SMTP is my primary SMTP, so that's not a good solution either. After searching on the Avast forums, I discovered a "hidden" setting that has to be keyed directly into the avast4.ini file.

Open your avast4.ini file (default location is c:\program files\alwil software\avast4\data) and find a section called [MailScanner]. Right under that heading, add the following new line:

IgnoreProcess=aspnet_wp.exe

Save and it takes effect immediately without a reboot or avast restart. You could comma separate additional values if you have other processes you'd like to exclude.

Posted under the influence of [[Stereolab::Hallucinex]]