The firewall is set up in such a way that when a new program is installed it always asks if it should be blocked or allowed. I told it to 'allow' then - when it couldn't connect - I checked to make sure. It was/is allowed. But even so, I now know catagorically that it can't be anything to do with any of my protection ware, for the reason I say above.
I believe it is... however, we've seen it a number of times anyway. The theory is that:
- the corresponding avast! module changes when avast! is updated
- the firewall detects the change - and would like to ask about what to do, but it happens too soon during the boot process, so it's not able to ask
--> it just blocks the connection
What usually helps is to delete the corresponding rules from the firewall, and let them be re-created again.
avast! doesn't do anything special when trying to update... it simply asks Windows to connect to the particular site. So, either there's no network connection, or the domain isn't resolved correctly (shouldn't be the case, because half of the update servers on the list are in IP format), or a firewall is blocking the connection...