FF-3b3 - turning off virus scanner

Discussion about official Mozilla Firefox builds
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Racer
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Post by Racer »

Voting for duped or wontfixed bugs typically does not help the situation, unless you can get some type of alternate exposure to the bug that highlights the problem. Unfortunately, a bug to add a pref was duped to a UI bug. This was an incorrect action given the reasoning in my earlier post. The "cancel" option/button should have really been in a different bug. Also, I've found that in bugzilla, if you are posting a bug that is related to other bugs in any way, it is a very good idea to reference those bugs from the new bug, and explicitly state why the bug is not a duplicate.

Of course, all of what I said doesn't help the situation. So, there are two options: 1) try to morph the bug into what you actually want (by removing the "cancel" part and stating why it is not a duplicate), or 2) creating a new very specific bug for the pref and state why it is not a duplicate.

At the risk of being slapped by bugmasters, I'd suggest #2 given that it is such a pain to get a bug unmarked as a duplicate.
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Stifu
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Post by Stifu »

RyanVM wrote:You can adjust your email prefs, you know. There's no reason CCing yourself to a bug has to lead to a lot of spam.

Maybe the default option should be changed to no bug spam, though... Or even, just not ever sending a mail to anyone when simply wanting to keep track on a bug, as I can't see when that'd be useful.
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Bluefang
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Post by Bluefang »

I hope this doesn't start becoming a trend among the devs. The reason I switched to FF in the first place was because the devs didn't make arrogant decisions about what they thought was best for the users. I honestly don't care that the feature exists, and I would even care if it was on by default, however not even having an option seems to go against the traditional Firefox... values.

Personally, this doesn't directly impact me as I both run Linux and don't have any AV scanner, however that doesn't bean I'm happy with this current development.
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Fuziwuzi
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Post by Fuziwuzi »

DeathWolf wrote:Sorry to post for a third time, but this is yet again another info.
The download scanner ( http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source ... canner.cpp ) uses the IOfficeAntiVirus interface, which is basically the api for ie&office for document scanning.
A simple way to make sure that firefox does not scan your files, is to disable this interface, which is implemented by <insert>.
Of course that will disable globally that interface, so use at your own risk, and only if, like me, you only use your antivirus to manually scan files when you deem necessary.

Here's instructions on how to disable it(use at your own risk, though, it should be safe):
Start regedit:
1-Search for instances of {56FFCC30-D398-11d0-B2AE-00A0C908FA49} (which is the uid for IOfficeAntiVirus)
They should be in a key called Implemented Categories, in a clsid key in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\
Example, for AVG free: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{B64263D2-8A70-4f86-BC9A-57BE9A7B66DD}\Implemented Categories
2-Rename that Implemented Categories to something else
3-Repeat if you have multiple antivirus implementing it
4-Restart firefox

Your FF should now not have been able to find the interface, and should completly skip the scanning from now on.
After waiting too long yet again for a scan (it seems to be taking longer, or maybe it is just my impatience growing), I decided to follow these steps and I can happily report success. I simply renamed the "Implemented Categories" to "Implemented CategoriesOLD" on the two instances I found (one for Windows Defender, another for AVG). Now FF doesn't do a virus scan. Yea!!!
I already have WinDefender and AVG running and scanning in the background, so the FF scan is superfluous and annoying.
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PoGo
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Post by PoGo »

Interesting reads, gang and a lot of really good info here ... I go away for a month and come home to find this thread has taken on a life of it's own. :)

Good show, Deathwolf ... I plan to try your fix that Fuziwuzi reports as effective. I looked for an AV call in every bit of code in FF, but found nothing pertinent and I don't have the FF experience to know to look elsewhere, as you did.

Other than this AV issue, I still have far greater stability with FF-3b than any version -2 and almost as good as 1.5x so I plan to stay with it for a while longer. If, however, I can't get this AV scanning to stop, I'll go back to 1.5.
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Uncle Spellbinder
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Post by Uncle Spellbinder »

Well, I just read the whole thread and I'm quite peeved. I've been away for a couple months as well. Though I've not had any scans last more than 10 seconds, it really bothers me that this is not a pref that can be turned on or off. I'd use FreeDownload Manager (as I do with FF 2.0.0.11), but the option to "download with FreeDownload Manager" does not appear in the right-click context menu in FF3.
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the_dees
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Post by the_dees »

RyanVM wrote:You can adjust your email prefs, you know. There's no reason CCing yourself to a bug has to lead to a lot of spam.

Yeah, I've seen this pref some time ago. Though, I still vote because I can see all the bugs I'm interested in in just one place. After a week or two I wouldn't know my own bugs anymore. It helps me a lot.
PoGo
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Post by PoGo »

Just an update, Deathwolf and Fuziwuzi ... the reg fix outlined above wroks perfectly !!! No Av calls and downloads now complete very rapidly.

Thanks guys .. you may not have solved everyone's problem, but you surely did mine.
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Kirk M
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Post by Kirk M »

Just for info's sake:

I'm currently running the nightly builds of Firefox 3 and running the latest version (2) of Windows Live OneCare (WLOC) (yes, it's very effective). I have not encountered these builds invoking any virus scans and download speed is quick and fast (DSL 786k connection). No type of Firefox anti-virus scan dialog pops up at any time. Out of curiosity I downloaded the anti-virus test files that Matti referenced previously (http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm) and a WLOC dialog box immediately popped up for each of the 3 files I attempted to download (I didn't bother with the text file) immediately after I clicked on the link for each file. The download manager hadn't even popped up yet. That's most likely the pre-fetch feature causing that. Attempting to download the file after WLOC cleaned it once also immediately popped up another WLOC dialog box and it cleaned it again.

The point of all the above is that it was WLOC that apparently caught the test files and not because Firefox 3 beta 3pre invoked anything. I also tested this using IE 7.0 and the latest version of Opera...same exact sequence of events occurred with the exception of IE 7.0 could not attempt download it at all after the file being cleaned the first time.

I don't know if this means that the developers have silently removed this feature, that WLOC somehow does not allow Firefox 3 to invoke a duplicate scan or that Firefox 3 simply can't invoke WLOC at all. Either way if anyone else is using WLOC version 2, a duplicate test using Firefox 3 beta 2 and/or the nightly builds might be in order. Also anyone testing the nightly builds might wish to try this same test using another anti-virus program.

I would definitely be interested in the results of such testing. :P
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Fuziwuzi
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Post by Fuziwuzi »

What I saw was a scan in the download manager window. As soon as the download had completed the graph would reset to the beginning and underneath it would indicate "scanning for virus" (or something like that, can't remember the exact wording). It was that scan which would take a long while, longer than the download in many cases. By altering the registry as I did, that scan does not occur now, which is appropriate since the antivirus program I use would scan the file anyway.
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Kirk M
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Post by Kirk M »

Fuziwuzi wrote:What I saw was a scan in the download manager window. As soon as the download had completed the graph would reset to the beginning and underneath it would indicate "scanning for virus" (or something like that, can't remember the exact wording). It was that scan which would take a long while, longer than the download in many cases. By altering the registry as I did, that scan does not occur now, which is appropriate since the antivirus program I use would scan the file anyway.


Okay, I did another download using the latest nightly build of Firefox 3 (same one as I used for testing in my previous post) just to double check and I definitely don't see what you were seeing before you hacked the registry rather the graph resets and disappears and the small pop-up appears above the System Tray saying "All downloads are complete".

Just for info's sake are you using Firefox beta 2 or the "nightlies"? Sorry if you indicated this before, I may have missed it. I'd really like to know if it's the nightly builds that have changed since beta 2 was released or that it might be WLOC 2 which I know is scanning on it's own sometime during the download (6MB took about 50 seconds to complete the download--about normal with my connection). It could be that the devs may have decided not to have Firefox 3 invoke a scan if it detected a scan was already in progress as any decent anti-virus program should do.
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Fuziwuzi
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Post by Fuziwuzi »

I'm using 3.0b3pre nightlies. Since altering the registry, I have no easy way to tell if the "feature" has been disabled by the devs or not in the recent builds.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b3pre) Gecko/2008012204 Firefox/3.0b3pre ID:2008012204
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Frank Lion
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Post by Frank Lion »

Fuziwuzi wrote:... It was that scan which would take a long while, longer than the download in many cases. By altering the registry as I did, that scan does not occur now, which is appropriate since the antivirus program I use would scan the file anyway.

This 'long while' is a puzzle. I've used the Download Scan extension for a few years now, which invokes my AVG to scan the download. It's completed almost instantly, even for 250mb+ downloads.

I can easily see why people wouldn't want this as default behaviour, without a toggle pref. I just like a clear sign than it has been scanned, rather than hoping the Resident Shield picks it up before I execute the .exe or whatever.
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shaddix
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Post by shaddix »

wow they not going to fix this o_O?



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hhh
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Post by hhh »

Of course they will, along with a ton of other problems. Patience, young Jedi.
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