I’m actually using Avast Premier, and have been a paid subscriber for 2 years now (how I didn’t put two and two together long ago baffles me now that I’ve ironed out this issue). While I don’t really need the use of avast’s firewall, since I also have windows firewall active and my router also has it’s own firewall functions built in, I still feel as though I’m paying for a program with a feature I can’t use.

Does this mean I will uninstall and leave avast behind? Never, not unless the AV core program itself ever causes issues. But so far avast has saved me from malicious websites, infected files, and has been the best AV I’ve tried over the years.

This is likely one reason this issue hasn’t been given the attention it deserves… But alas… I will keep on chugging along without avast firewall and enjoy my system stability once again. I was on the verge of just building a whole new rig…