Probable bug with Surf-Shield in AVG Anti-virus Free Edition 2011.
After upgrading to AVG 2011 from AVG v9 the FantasticFiction web site (
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/ ) fails to display properly in both IE8 and Firefox. The site did display correctly immediately prior to the upgrade on the same system and using the same browsers.
A similar system, still running AVG v9, continues to display the site properly in both browsers.
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Problem:
When the site's base url is accessed by either browser on the problem system, it displays a string of text followed by random symbols.
Example:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2010 20:30:06 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.41 Ben-SSL/1.59 Cache-Control: max-age=7200, must-revalidate Last-Modified: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 08:06:38 GMT ETag: "341120b7-ab0-4ca1a20e" Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 2736 Keep-Alive: timeout=2, max=200 Connection: Keep-Alive Content-Type: text/html Content-Encoding: gzip ...
... "Content-Encoding: gzip" is the last recognizable text in the string. After that random symbols are displayed. Presumably gzip data displayed as symbols instead of interpreted.
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I was able to bypass the problem for both browsers by:
1. Disable Surf-Shield
2. Clear browsers' cache
NOTE: IE8 keeps a separate cache for sites on its Favorites list.
Firefox and IE8 then displayed the site's base url correctly.
As a test, I re-enabled Surf-Safe and used both browsers to open the site's base url. Immediately, both displayed the page incorrectly. After again disabling Surf-Safe and clearing the caches, both browsers correctly displayed the base page.
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Specs of problem system:
WinXP (v5.1) SP3
IE8 (v8.0.6001.18702)
Firefox (v3.6.10)
AVG 10.0.1120
virus db version: 422/3178
LinkScanner version: 358
Specs of similar, working system:
WinXP (v5.1) SP3
IE7 (v7.0.5730.13)
Firefox (v3.6.10)
AVG 9.0.862
virus db version: 271.1.1/3177
LinkScanner version: 357
