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Online banking sessions terminate with error - .net and a/v issue?
I apologize in advance if this belongs in a different forum, but the cause is so undetermined that I want to start in the "general" area.
My problem is that my web banking all of a sudden this year started abnormally ending my sessions. Not a timeout, but just throwing up a "system error" screen when I'd click on a normal link in a normal session.
My bank is M&T, a major US bank. I've been using their web banking since 2002 in Win98, 2000, XP, Win7, and MacOS environments, and although it's not very forward or cutting edge, it's always worked - until around February this year when the problems began.
Their customer service - online and by phone - was useless with this. I'd tell them that I'd already taken obvious actions like clearing my cookies/cache, rebooting my computer, etc., and they'd provide boilerplate advice suggesting I do all those things.
Finally last week I contacted a friend of mine who is a manager with the bank, and she put me in touch with an IT manager there who has been great working with me to try to identify and fix the problem.
So far it's been much more me sending my reports to him when I have an abnormal session end.
But today he sent me a suggestion, and I'm posting the relevant part here:
This strikes me as odd and perhaps not helpful. The problem occurs on both my home and office Windows 7 computers. At home I used Avast! free, and at work Microsoft Security Essentials - two different programs. Yet the abnormal ends to web banking sessions happen on both computers. And I have no .asax files on my computer, and the last .config file (out of almost 200 I have) is from a year ago.Potential cause: session data is lost because of antivirus software activity.
This problem can occur when antivirus software scans the Web application files. During the scanning process, the antivirus software may mark the Global.asax, the Web.config, and/or the Machine.config files as modified. This modification prompts the Microsoft .NET Framework to restart the Web application. If the session data is stored in-process, all session data is lost whenever a Web application is restarted.
To resolve this problem, use one of the following methods:
· Configure your antivirus software so that it does not scan .asax and .config files.
· Contact the antivirus software manufacturer for instructions.
I have tried the suggestion, and in a brief trial run did not experience an abnormal end to my session. But that proves nothing, since the abnormal terminations, though annoying, probably only happen about a third of the time. So I'll have to go a while before I can "know" the problem is fixed.
So my questions:
1. Has anyone else ever experienced abnormal ends to web sessions - banking or otherwise - as described above?
2. Does the suggested fix from the bank seem plausible?