With the issues that I have been experiencing, I am leaning towards incompatibility issues between Windows 8.1 and Avast Premier vs 9.0.2006.159 are still occurring. I am basing this on a complete installation of Avast Premier, meaning every protection module installed. It turns off Windows Firewall and replaces it with the Avast Firewall as well as install browser plugins which prevent site tracking and eliminates ads (Internet Explorer 11 indicates that the Avast plugin is not compatible). All of these features in themselves I have no problem with. Being an Avast user for many years, I trust that that the Avast protection modules are better than Windows. Unfortunately, I am having issues where webpages fail to display properly, webpages take an excessive amount of time to load - or do not load at all. The question becomes, how do I know that it is Avast and not something in the Windows OS, or interference from another program causing my issues? The first thing I did was to launch msconfig and turn off every application, but I still experienced issues with web browsing. Secondly I completely uninstalled Avast Premier, rebooted and all of my problems disappeared - every one! No jumbled webpages, no delay in loading, nothing.
I am of the belief that the issues could be resolved without having to uninstall Avast (I would prefer to have Avast, rather than use Windows Defender for example), and the answer may be in the Avast settings. However I am not that familiar with the settings and their meanings to make the appropriate adjustments. Can someone provide assistance to this issue. My fear is, that unless Avast resolves these issues with an update to the program - preferably sooner rather than later, I may have to walk away from Avast... which would be doubly painful as I have the paid version! Thank you!