Eddy
4
Well, I typically don't touch the registry, as deleting the wrong registry key is the kiss of death for a system -- even with scanreg/restore.
A good uninstall util for avg or a good registry cleaner can do it for you safely.
Do I understand correctly that you had/have ZA as firewall?
If so, it is a known fact that ZA sometimes for no obvious reason prevent applications to acces the inet. Removing/reinstalling of ZA solves the problem. Especially version 5.x seems to have this problems.
I use Firefox 1.0 as a browser
Did you try to open pages with another browser to see if that one was working?
I'd like to know if it's better than AVG
People who have Avast on their systems tend to say yes. But no mather what av people have, they always tend to vote for their av. Detection rate of Avast is good as various decent tests show. (eg like the vb test) I would say it is more a matter if you find Avast working better on your system than others and if you like how you as user can interact with Avast better (or not)
Yes, many people complain about avg 7 and switch to another av. More and more people drop their current av for Avast. Whatever it is for them, Avast must have something that make them like Avast more than others.
Well, if you want to give Avast another try, let us know. We are here to help/guide you.