This is happening everywhere with Avast and AOL this weekend. I signed up to see what was being done about the problem, and obviously nothing if they don't know about it. I have spoken to AOL several times over the weekend (and I haven't had to contact them in years with any issues)! This has been very frustrating. I actually saw the whole thing unfold. I was online and suddenly Avast alerted me that there was a new version (5.1.889). I clicked yes to go ahead and upgrade as I had done in the past without incident. It asks you to restart your computer as usual, which I did. As soon as I restarted, I let everything load as usual and restarted my AOL. All of a sudden, I find that AOL will not connect. I thought it was a fluke for a moment (no problems with AOL whatsoever prior, and again not for many years). I kept trying. It would say "finding a way to connect" and that would run for an hour that way and do nothing for me. I was able to connect to the internet through Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer as usual without incident. I was aggravated as AOL is my main software, and has my e-mail etc, and it would not connect no matter what I tried. I had exhausted all possibilities (I even temporarily turned off Windows Firewall, and that did not help me).
I emptied caches, rebooted, tried all the fixes I could try throughout my computer (Windows 7 PC, and running perfectly otherwise, as it had from the day I received it). I ran Avast and no viruses were found. I ran my SpySweeper and no problems were found. I finally called AOL and braced myself. (hate their customer service). The man I spoke to was honest with me and said that they were fielding many calls like mine, and all from people using Avast Anti-Virus. He tried to do all of the things he could do from his end, but nothing worked.
The next day (yesterday) I tried again and still AOL is not able to connect (but everything else will). I was disgusted. I called AOL and this time I got a woman who asked me what Anti-Virus program I was using. I told her Avast and she said that they are not able to assist me! I was stunned! She said that for liability reasons, she cannot tell me to uninstall the software however the problem is not with AOL. It's with people using AOL and Avast and that they have been getting calls left and right all weekend. I wanted to pull my hair out. I've been using Avast's free anti- virus for years and tried to find a number to call them, but only found Iyogi....no thank you. I finally caved and uninstalled my Avast and lo and behold, AOL is working again just fine! I kept trying to find an older version to download as apparently AOL had no problems with those, but to no avail (and I would only go through someone I trust).
I did take note of something else. I had a hunch and after AOL had been working for most of the day, I then downloaded free Avast again, and all was fine. My Avast was fine and I was still connected to AOL. Once I turned off my computer, and tried to restart my AOL, I was back to all the problems I was having. So in other words, I would need to uninstall and reinstall Avast daily! I REALLY HOPE THEY GET THIS FIXED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Soooo aggravated.
This is obviously a conflict between AOL and Avast's newest upgrade.