I've a variation on this theme.
If an admin reckons it needs a new topic, fair enough.
My access to my workplace is through a Barracuda java vpn launch from within the browser, I happen to use chrome.
I can get to the vpn launch ok, i.e. authenticate and login.
Before the rewrite/upgrade this week per
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=139112.msg1021944#msg1021944 I could stop my firewall for 10 minutes, i.e. as short as it allowed, then open my rdp connection and restart the firewall.
Post rewrite rather than the rdp timeout/denied type response I see my office desktop start to logon, then nothing. Logs/traffic appears to show my 127.0.0.1 traffic goes out ok but not back. I can see the browser side of that same comms is green ok, but the mstc has the red arrow.
My launcher page gives me other pages to play with aside from rdp, and they render by appear to show dns issues, so the browser otherwise would show the URL as my vpn reference, post new changes that renders as 127.0.0.1/whatever and the on page graphics show a dns issue.
If I hit this page from a non-avast protected system on my network, happens to be fedora 18, I can get the page with no dns issue.
Unfortunately my rdp access form that laptop has always been hit and miss, so I cannot confirm if the launched mstsc from the chrome webpage is denied for local reasons or as a side effect of the rewrite, at least until Monday - however I suspect its the avast changes.
Home and office are both on win7.1x64.
If I stop ALL the active protection one by one or all together to see if I can encourage a new shielded behaviour to stop getting in my way no joy.
I've added the URL to trusted etc and disabled intelligent scanning etc/removed 'other programs' from the scan list etc., and aside from finding I cannot add it as https, it has made no difference. i.e. if I add my
https://vpn to the list, the avast adds http to the start of it! So it becomes
http://https://..
