So, I've been using Avast for a few years now with no problems. The other day my Avast updated to the newest version, and everything was fine. I eventually turned off my laptop and restarted it, but suddenly I had no connection to the internet. My ethernet cable connection just didn't work, it said I was connected to a network, but I had no internet access.
I went to our college IT department after trying a lot of stuff to no avail (even going as far as reinstalling Avast, uninstalling and reinstalling the adapter, drivers, etc), but even with the IT guys help we were unable to make any progress on it, no matter what we tried we could not get the ethernet connection to work.
I came back and started fiddling around with the firewall (he told me the firewall may be interfering with the driver downloads, which it wasn't). I messed around a bit, and suddenly my internet connection was up and running again. Being pretty dumb, I didn't really remember exactly what steps I took when I fixed it, but restarting the computer, I noticed something kinda odd.
When I booted up to the desktop (I have my computer set to boot to the desktop), I noticed a window popped up and vanished. Once again my internet connection was not working. Again I went into Avast, and this time I decided to just turn the firewall off and restart my computer. Lo and behold, my internet connection was once again working, eventually the dialog box asking me to connect to the network (from Avast's firewall) popped up and I accepted it and told it to remember the network.
I'm somewhat computer savvy, but far from an expert, and it's fixed for the time being (and I guess I can use the old "disable firewall, restart computer" trick every time I need too), but I wanted to post this here for a few reasons.
1. See if anybody else has had a similar issue, and if there is long lasting fix.
2. Let people know about a potential fix to the issue, in case others are having the problem (this particular...occurrence had quite a few IT members stumped, and I only discovered a "fix" through a ton of trial and error)
3. Potentially get the problem fixed in the next release.
I have loved Avast and recommend it to everybody when they ask what Anti-virus to use, and I'm glad I can still use it without problems, but I will admit this little bug (whether it is a problem on my end with some installs on my computer, or just a strange quirk with windows
had me quite frustrated for a while. I think it may be a matter of the window that pops up to ask you about connecting to a network not staying long enough, or something along those lines. I noticed it pop up but it was for a split second, so it may have been anything else.
