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Welcome to the forums, jrm100.
First of all, you should never post your email in a forum ... unless you like lots of spam email. There are bot networks/programs that constantly search for email addresses in public forums.
Have you allowed the Avast services through your firewall? This must be done in order for the avast anti-virus to check for viruses that may try to come in or try to go out of your computer. This is also needed for the program & virus definition updates.
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