Alright, I'm having a bit of a rough time with Avast antivirus, right now. Also, since there seems to be no board for general Avast issues, I have to post this here.
I am using the free version of Avast and it should be updated to the latest version.
I needed to disable Avasts shields for something. I turned on silent mode by accident but decided to keep silent mode on. I disabled all of the shields with the option "until I restart". When I needed to turn the shields back on, I tried to access the tray icon menu by right clicking on it but nothing happened. I tried left clicking on it to bring up the UI so I could turn them back on but the UI never came up. I then tried to open the UI via the Avast shortcut on my desktop and that had the same result.
I thought it was odd and couldn't figure out what was going on so I opened my web browser (which I was previously using) and to my surprise, I had no internet access. I tried checking the connection and the error that was returned was a DNS access error. I kept trying to refresh the page but I kept getting an error.
After this, I tried to repair Avast through programs and settings. I waited until it was repaired and it gave me the option to restart, so I did.
After the restart, my mouse and keyboard were not functioning. I restarted several times but kept getting the same results. I ended up going into repair mode for Windows and I could use my mouse and keyboard. I started a system restore and that's where I currently am.
If anyone has any advice on what to do, please let me know.
