is webshield a proxy?

[notme]

Does all my web surfing now go through a proxy server using webshield?

I also had problems with webshield not letting pages load or hang, to correct this I uninstalled the old avast version did a reg clean and uninstalled the new version that went on top of it and did a reg clean.
 then I reinstalled the latest version of avast home = clean install and no more problems, seems updating the older version somehow corrupted something , my daughters pc was the same way.

my pc is xp pro SP2  with McaFee firewall and my daughters is xp home sp2 with kerio firewall.

 It seems that a clean install is needed? I now have no page hanging or not loading problems, with the current 4.6.623 version., and webshield.

[Lisandro]

Does all my web surfing now go through a proxy server using webshield?

Yes and no. It's a local proxy: Internet > WebShield > your browser

It seems that a clean install is needed?

In fact, not.
I did an update from an old version (4.5) and everything worked fine.
Maybe something get corrupted in your system and, fortunatelly, everything get fixed when you did a clean install 

[notme]

Thanks Technical, for the great info as usual, I guees something went screwy on both pc's when i did the update, the main thing all is well and AVAST is still a great program as always.