For all of you folks who read my post but offered no help—I am here to tell you that the issue I reported did exist. I had no firewall/network control over AvastAvc and AvastUI–BUT I, after many hours and repeated help requests from another site (one that Avast sends people to for downloading programs to test/fix issues) the issue is resolved.
Now if perchance any of you Avast ‘helpers’ read this I just want to say thanks for letting me figure it out on my own with the help of non-Avast people. ::slight_smile: