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The good news is that after much investigation, I’ve managed a workable solution. The bad news is I still don’t understand what caused the problem in the first place, so maybe someone can shed some light on the issue for me.
The client side issue was solved by reinstalling the printer software (twice). No idea why this fixed it as it was working 100% alongside the free avast client before installing the BP client, but so far so good. Similar to the server issue below, there does not appear to be any sign of ports being altered in the firewall, so it’s quite strange.
With the SQL connection, I finally established that port 1434 was being blocked by Windows firewall (this SQL connection is for MyMovies if anyone has a similar problem in future). What confuses me is why that port gets blocked on the server as soon as the avast antivirus component is installed, but gets allowed as soon as it is uninstalled again. However, looking at the firewall configuration, that port is nowhere near the ones used by avast (8731, 8372 and 25322) and there is no specific entry dealing with port 1434 in the firewall configure.
So, very odd - but it now works, which is good news for those WHS users looking for an antivirus solution - it’s a bit pricey versus the old WHS-specific one and doesn’t come with any dashboard plugin, but it’s easy enough to administer via remote access and the web interface so I’ll live with it until the next (hopefully) version of WHS-specific software is available.