Avast randomly stopping Web access?

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Something weird has been happening in my Win10 64 system (Avast Free 24.3.6108) for some weeks now.
Sometimes, with no apparent reason, I suddenly can’t reach any web site or service, despite Windows reporting the Internet connection to be active.
Also the ping command works, but all browsers seem unable to reach any site.

The first time I spent an hour trying all the solutions I could think of (silly ones included), but a system reboot seemed to be the only way.
When a few days later the same thing happened again, I found out that disabling all Avast protections and immediately re-enabling them did the trick.
The problem recurred another 4 or 5 times (the last one 10 minutes ago), always without apparent cause; and I always “solved” it by disabling and then re-enabling Avast protections.

In the meantime I have not noticed any malfunctions or suspicious behaviours on the PC, but obviously I’d like to know exactly what’s going on, to be sure that there isn’t some malicious software at work.

So I’m asking:
has something like this happened also to other users? Could Avast be the culprit?

2

I had something similar around 6 months ago. everything was working and then a lot of websites blocked.
turned out to be an update waiting to be installed in avast that didnt auto install and once installed and a reboot all was working fine again.

your issue may be something totally different but worth a look. menu>settings>update. anything red waiting to be loaded?

3

Thanks for your answer.

Actually there was an available upgrade (as I said, I had version 24.3) but my update settings are always set on “manual”, so the situation was the same I usually have for most of the time, as I prefer to upgrade once in a while to lower as much as possible the chances of… unpleasant side effects.

Obviously I cannot rule out that version 24.3 had some glitches and that version 24.4, which I installed today, eliminated them.
And I sincerely hope that the absence of further episodes in the coming weeks confirms to me that this is indeed the case. :]

4

Hope it sorts the issue out.