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That is unfortunately a totally different problem and one that I doubt avast is directly involved in. If you haven’t manually set the browsers to use the web shield proxy then there should be no interaction between your browser and avast, other than avast will scan the executable as you launch your browser.

avast! only scans it doesn’t block, it only alerts to infection.

The only think I can think of is your system may be running out of resources and that may stop the loading of other programs, though I would have expected to at least see some errors, that was why I asked.

What other programs do you have start on boot ?
You need to only load those programs that are essential, some programs automatically set-up to load on boot when installed and they don’t need to, like media players.

What is your processor and how much RAM does your laptop have ?

There is the avast help file, which contains a lot of information, including the info on the link Tech gave.