With the shield on, Avast does not let me to load images properly. Gifs only load for a few frames and then become distorted and freeze, normal images end up being oddly distorted. Some websites like tumblr don’t load AT ALL. Video sites like Vimeo load only the first 2-3 seconds of the video and then end it. Avast seems to be just stopping the connection mid-load.
As long as the shield is off, everything works fine. I removed Grime fighter and all other tacked on shovelware from Avast via uninstall > change. My firefox doesn’t have AOS either. I’m on Windows 7.
Is this an upgrade from a previous version, a new install, or were you running fine and suddenly this problem started? If a new install or upgrade, have you rebooted since that install/upgrade? (I found that Avast! doesn’t necessarily ask for a reboot after an install, but that is recommended.) If the problem just started out of the blue, have you tried a reboot to see if that had cleared the problem?
Have you tried going through Control Panel → uninstall a program (some of the steps to here may differ depending on the version of Windows) → right+click on Avast, “change/uninstall” → select “repair” and let it do its thing, and then reboot?
Which specific Avast! product (free, Internet Security, etc.) and program version (e.g., 2014.9.0.2016) are you running? Which specific shield(s) do you have to disable to get it to work?
What specific operating system?
What software firewall(s) are you running? (If you are using an Avast! product with a built-in firewall, it is generally recommended that you use that one instead of the Windows firewall.)
What other antivirus software did you have before Avast!, and did you do that vendor’s cleanup as well as uninstall before installing Avast!? (Believe it or not, when I uninstalled my previous antivirus product, there were two vendor-supplied cleanup programs to run after running that antivirus uninstall routine, and one of them required me to be running Windows in safe mode.)
Done the repair thing via uninstall + reboot, the issue is still here.
The issue started today after I did a full scan and a reboot, then registered my free version again as it was about to expire, and I assume Avast was also updated to the latest version at this point. I’ve had several reboots since then, I’ve tried numerous setting changes with my browsers including disabling all add-ons and extensions, but then I noticed if I disabled Avast’s web shield problems in both Firefox and Chrome were gone.
What is the program version of Avast! Free? If you open the Avast User Interface and click on Help → About Avast!, you should see “Program version:” followed by a number. The most recent version is 2014.9.0.2016.
Disabling webshield fixes the issue.
Didn’t try a clean install.
No other security software present on my system.
Everything else is working completely fine.
I fixed it. It was Shopper Pro, which is malware that is installed by Avast with a recent update without asking. I had to remove it from Avast via uninstall, then remove it from Firefox addons, then remove it from control panel.
It is your choice to install Chrome or not.
There is nothing sneaky about it.
avast is only offering to install Chrome, but it is still your choice to install it or not.
I know that it’s my choice. But the option is only presented during the installation reboot where it is easy to miss. And the default is ON.
And AOS for firefox has so many bugs in its current form that it is bordering on malware. There are currently more threads here about AOS than about Avast proper.