Every morning at about 5:30, give or take an hour, avast crashes. According to the Windows Event Logs, this has been happening for over a week now, starting on about April 19th. As time went on, things began to get worse. It would always reboot, but the window began appearing, interrupting other programs (particularly fullscreen) in order to bring up the main menu, despite be having Silent Mode on.
Alongside the error is a message saying that it failed to connect to "shepherd.ff.avast.com timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded." This is always present after the crash and corresponds with an my internet being quietly severed. Turning off the web shields and then back on again seems to solve at least that issue, though I know I am not the only person to have experienced this.
Absolutely nothing changed on the 19th. I did not visit any new sites that day or the day before, no files were downloaded, nothing "new" was experienced.
I ran the repair function on the morning of the 26th, and it said avast needed to reboot my computer. I do not know if that means it found something broken. However, as of this morning the problem has begun again, at the same time, with another webshield blockage. I tried accessing a log of some sort but it wouldn't load. I just kind of stumbled into it so I don't know what it was for or if it is relebant.
This is an urgent problem because it is definitely getting worse. I am forced to consider uninstalling avast but I would rather not.
My OS is Windows 7 32-bit. I am using free antivirus.
If anyone can help, please.