Daddy0h,
With due respect to wyrmrider, I would not personally recommend taking the course of action he describes in the last line of his post and start updating programs all over the place. When a specific problem occurs, the less you change the easier it is to sort out the original cause of the problem.
When/if you get Avast installed again, and if the same problem exists, can you please advise whether it is the same if you use Internet Explorer as it is when you use Firefox.
Can you then try temporarily turning off just the Avast Web shield. Left click on the "a" ball, click on the Details button at the bottom of the box, scroll the shield icons in the left column until you find the Web Shield Icon. Click on it, then click on Terminate, the click on Yes to "Persist the Changes". Can you now advise whether this has made any difference to the problem. Providing the Standard shield is left running you will still have reasonable protection whilst you try this.
What version of Spybot are you running - if it is before 1.5 there are some issues that will need addressing before long (though unlikely to have anything to do with this problem), however if it is either 1.5 or the current 1.6 it should not cause any problems with Avast (I have been running Spybot and Avast together through a number of version changes without any problems). Can you have a look at the immunisation screen though in Spybot, and check whether there is any group of immunisations that are ticked but have not immunised. If for instance one of the cookie groups hasn't immunised, it can indicate that another program (outside of Spybot) has control of that item.
Please post back when you've tried this
