Yesterday i decided to upgrade my free Avast anti-virus to a 15 days trial of the full version.
Upgraded fine but after the upgrade and the reboot, i was no longer able to connect to the internet. None of the popular browsers worked, programs like Mailwasher didn't work either anymore but i could connect to webbanking and other https sites. Also, i could connect to any gameserver and i was able to send and retrieve mail through Outlook although Mailwasher was blocked.
Thinking it had something to do with the installation of the trial version, i reverted back to the free version but the problem persisted. I then started looking at other stuff but i ended back at the AVAST anti-virus. Maybe the problem was that i had 2 firewalls colliding when the full AVAST was installed (i also had the Windows Firewall running). Disabling all shields made everything work again. I then found that disabling webshield let me surf again and that disabling the mailshield let me work with Mailwasher again.
SO i uninstalled Avast and rebooted and re-installed it again, same problem. No internet when webshield was up. The settings looked the same as when everything still worked so i turned down everything i could find in there but as long as webshield was up, no internet.
In the end i gave up and uninstalled avast entirely. Everything works again now.
I also noted that avast left quite some leftovers in the registry after it was uninstalled. So the uninstall was not "clean".
Quenstion: how do i get Avast free back in working condition?
(PS: Windows 7 64-bit)
