My NAS is blocked too, and I spent hours trying to fix various things on the PC and the NAS yesterday and today on one computer, to no avail. And then my own computer started doing the same thing today after Avast updated and sure enough, the firewall is again the problem. I have been a loyal Avast customer for probably over 10 years, and have recommended it to a lot of others over the years. But the firewall has given me more and more issues over the past couple years, blocking some essential software, like most of the Adobe CC suite, as well as others.
With this last update, they have removed several important features like opening the firewall to the private network, and editing or adding to the 'friends' list. And the application rules don't say default public/private now, but default medium risk work zone whatever that means. Nothing I have tried will allow me to get past the firewall to access some of the local network devices for more than a little while. And this is happening on two different Win 10 systems here, and just in the last day or so since the updates.
I spent nearly an hour on the phone with support, and the experience was poor. I have nothing against people in other countries, but it was tough to understand the thick accents and listen to the slow, halting English. I don't think the person 'reviewing' my PC hardly knew what to look at. She did not check any of the firewall settings! She just looked a little bit at the firewall application rules window I happened to have open, and scrolled up and down a bit, slowly, once in a while, almost aimlessly. If she was supposed to know something, or even be acting like she knew something, she needs better training. She opened the programdata folder just long enough to see the empty McAfee folder from the bloatware I uninstalled the moment I bought the computer, and that was enough to try to sell me a support package.
A computer tech would never have stared at some of this stuff for five minutes while I was on hold, but would have gone looking through the some of the specific listings, looked at settings, or event logs, or at very, very least looked at the firewall settings pages! When I balked at buying a $199 support package, they put a somewhat more skilled tech on the line, and then he looked through the registry long enough to find an old McAfee entry, and again, it was time to buy. Finally, he asked if I had tried reinstalling Avast, that maybe that would fix it, as the last item. I've dealt with some support people along the way, and I suspect that if some quick fix or two doesn't work, I am either going to be told that my NAS is the fault, or be told to reinstall Windows. I don't need to pay $200 to be told to reinstall Windows.
Ironically, my Avast Premiere multi-license is set to renew in 12 days, hmmm. I am disappointed - I am a paying customer, and have been for a long time.
That said, I have now disabled the port scanning, and maybe that will do it. Or maybe they will patch some bug, or just bring back enough control to open the private network and I can keep using it. I think it does work at protecting - at least to the best of my knowledge, it has not let nasties through in all the years I have had it.
