I'll sort the router problem out somewhere else. Can you help me resole the wpad problem?
I will say, if it's relevant, that the machine has been experiencing one other very troublesome behavior. It started a couple of weeks before the wpad problem but I'm not sure if it's related. Different applications often "fight" for focus -- that is, I will be, for example, writing something in a web browser, and suddenly another application will be brought to the foreground, for example an open Word file and the focus will switch to that application. Sometimes I have to switch back to what I was working manually, and sometimes it will switch back on its own a few seconds. Sometimes it's just one switch, and sometimes it starts rapidly flickering and I have to either wait it out or actively click on some other application in the task bar to stop the flickering and access what I'm working again. Along with this the task bar often refreshes, reloading the application icons and sometimes changing their order.
I have been suspecting that this some sort of Windows Explorer corruption, but I haven't been able to track it down. Along with the frequent, sometimes constant wpad threat popups, it makes my computer working environment extremely challenging. I have been assuming that the two problems aren't connected, but since you haven't been able to track down the wpad problem, I'm wondering if there is some kind of hard drive error, or something else that is creating both sets of problems.
I would also like to know, if we are sure that there isn't a wpad threat after all, if there's any way to disable these popups without disabling all Avast warnings. And is that advisable?
