I am having that problem also. I am running Windows XP service pack 3, and have been using the free versions of Avast for years. This problem of web pages being blocked with the error message of "connection has been reset" exists on all web browsers and user profiles on this computer. Interestingly enough though, Google pages seem to get blocked less often than some others. Yahoo gets blocked often, and some sites, such as usps.com are blocked all the time. This problem cropped up about 4 days ago, and may or may not have to do with ccleaner or some Windows update I ran around then. I had Avast 7 free version installed. I tried using the avast uninstaller in safe mode to remove all avast products and reinstalling the latest version. I have even tried downgrading to Avast 5. Nothing I have tried has worked, and I have been fighting this for that same 4 days. I am running Avast on multiple computers on my home network, and this one is the only one that seems to have the problem. I even went looking on these forums for suggestions, and nothing I could find was helpful. The only thing I have been able to do so far that works is to temporarily disable the web shield, which seems to allow me to get my web pages. If anyone else can figure this out, I'm all ears, as I am beyond fed up at this point.