Avast is blocking the web?

[BowlerPortraits]

After yesterday's update of Avast 5.0, I have been unable to access any websites via either Internet Explorer 8 or Google's Chrome 6. I have been able to receive and send email and was able to access websites through the AOL interface, but not through a regular web browser. Contacted my local ISP and after troubleshooting all..... I disabled Avast temporarily and all works fine.

What is going on? I read through the forum and find I am not the only one having this negative experience. Since this is my father's computer and he is not tech savvy, I too will have to replace Avast with Microsoft Security Essentials.

I regret having to do this because Avast is a program I have used for many years and it has protected our systems well and I like it.

Rather distressing..... ;-{

[DavidR]

Since you have read other topics, I guess you could have said what you have done to try and remedy this. Starting with the usual suspects, firewall blocking avast's web shield, etc. etc.

Disabling avast is the worst possible option, disabling the web shield would be a stop gap whilst retaining the other resident protection, so the lessor of two evils.

I would Imagine that the AOL browser/interface isn't even monitored by the web shield, as it uses a different, proprietary protocol, so that would be why that gets through. I would imagine if you tried visiting a https page that would get through also as the web shield doesn't monitor https (secure encrypted) traffic.

If this is also correct then it sounds like the web shield itself is being blocked.