"The last thing to do is turn of WebShield. "
Yes, that's true of course. And it absolutely used to be the last thing I did when I found out that this was the problem. Now it's still the last thing I do after checking network, hardware, and other local issues - but it's now also the primary recognized cause of this problem.
I'm running Windows 8.1 Pro but thanks for W10 info.
It's fascinating to see that I got another 161201-0 update today (12/2 at 7am) and now it's working.
C'mon Avast, just bump it to 161202-0, fess up, improve the QA in the future, and let's move forward, eh?