So Avast occassionally gets itself into a state over the years; after working fine for the last 3-4 years (and I have used it for more than a decade) the last unrequested update today has modified the firewall – it suddenly asked for many apps do I give them permission or not – I gave all permission.
The current vesion installed is 26.2.10802g (build 26.2.10802.762) under WIndows 11 Pro - completely up to date.
Now after this – it’s firewall when active doesn’t allow firefox to reach any website – not even google.
I can’t casts videos to my TV – says it fails on a user timeout asking user permission that never appears.
I tried from control panel to repair the app – said it suceeded but issue persists.
I checked all my networks are marked as trusted.
I cleared all the firefox rules – issue persists.
When I disable the firewall temporarily everything works – I can try as a last resort removing Avast completely and then reinstalling it all again; not keen to do this if the root cause is known and can be corrected in a simpler fashion.
When I re-enable the firewall it everything breaks web connectivity all over again…
I know many people hate this and other security apps – it is getting long in the tooth.
Anyone else experiencing this or have experience on how to fix it other than a complete removal and re-install?
New behaviour I just noticed testing firewall on Chrome - when I enable firewall Windows immediately changes the network symbol from Lan connected PC to the globe of the Earth it uses when the network isn’t detected - so it appears the Firewall is completely blocking Network access!!!