Uninstalling Avast breaks IMAP on Outlook 2010?

[REDACTED]

Tonight I uninstalled Avast to see whether it was causing slowdown issues with my personal home desktop computer (Windows 10, 64-bit). When I did, Outlook 2010 stopped being able to connect to my IMAP profile. It can still send via SMTP but not connect to my IMAP folders. Outlook 2010 gives me an error 0x800CCC0E.  What is more strange, the Mail app on Windows 10 can access the same IMAP account and read new messages perfectly fine. I've tried telling Windows Defender not to do a live-scan but this doesn't seem to change anything.

Then I re-installed Avast and instantly Outlook worked again. Uninstalled it again - same problem immediately returned.

My IMAP server requires SSL on port 993, if that is possibly relevant.

This is completely the opposite of what I'd expect... I'd expect the presence of antivirus software to interfere with my emails, not its absence! Any help would be appreciated.

[Eddy]

Did you use aswclear when removing avast ?

[Pondus]

aswclear > https://www.avast.com/uninstall-utility

After uninstalling avast, try delete the account from your mail client, reboot and set it up again

[DavidR]

Did/do you still have the avast plugin for Outlook enabled ?
If so removed it.

I would have thought that it would have been removed when uninstalling avast.

[REDACTED]

Thanks to all who replied. I did all of the things suggested (ran aswclear; confirmed the Outlook plugin was indeed properly removed; removed the profile entirely and re-added it) but none seemed to do the trick. I ended up stumbling across a solution by setting the incoming server to port 143 with "auto" encryption selected in Outlook, rather than port 993 with SSL encryption (which is what I had when Avast was running). I am not quite sure why this worked - it may have to do with my email provider - but in any case am happy the issue is resolved. If it turns out my other issues aren't related to Avast, I'll be reinstalling it.