Webshield blocked all websites except Google

[system]

This ate up hours of my time Sunday night and Monday morning. Will try to include all details:

Mac OSX 10.9.4
Chrome Version 36.0.1985.125
(Also had same exact problems with Firefox and Safari)
Wi-fi and AirPort – all green lights, all updated

Avast! v. 9.0 (42061)
Virus definitions v. 14072101

1. My Outlook-for-Web and all Google apps (mail, calendar, drive) and sites opened fine, as usual.
2. My Dropbox sync’d normally.
3. All URLs typed on pasted in address bar would not open. “No data received.” (ALL!!)
4. Any links clicked in mail or Google search results would not open. “No data received.” (ALL!!)

How I fixed it:

Opened Avast. Opened Preferences. Unchecked Web Shield. AND NOW EVERYTHING WORKS.

This was a really awful experience as I thought it might be my router, my AirPort device(s) – So many restarts, so much time wasted.

THANKS A LOT, AVAST. Maybe you could TEST YOUR SOFTWARE before you release it.

Mindy McAdams

[tumic]

@macloo post:1

3. All URLs typed on pasted in address bar would not open. “No data received.” (ALL!!)
4. Any links clicked in mail or Google search results would not open. “No data received.” (ALL!!)

This may be caused by several things, e.g. broken IPv6 in your network or some
incompatible SW you have installed (e.g. Cisco AnyConnect Web Security Module),
but without any useful info, it is hard to say more.

@macloo post:1

This was a really awful experience as I thought it might be my router, my AirPort device(s) – So many restarts, so much time wasted.

Well, maybe looking into the system log, before starting blindly restarting your machine
would not be a bad idea…

@macloo post:1

THANKS A LOT, AVAST. Maybe you could TEST YOUR SOFTWARE before you release it.

We do, of course, test our software, before we release it. But it is not possible to test it in
all environments, that may occur on several hundred thousands of machines.

[system]

Tumic, this reply was not very helpful. After I read it, I opened Avast and looked on every menu for access to any kind of system log, etc. Nothing there. So if I were to check the system logs, how would I do that? How would I know I needed to do that?

If you mean the full Mac system log – which I’ve seen on a different Mac that started crashing a while back – it’s not like a layman can make sense of all those strings.

When Avast simply starts blocking all but two websites in the entire Internet, maybe it should provide an error message.

Mindy

[tumic]

@macloo post:3

Tumic, this reply was not very helpful. After I read it, I opened Avast and looked on every menu for access to any kind of system log, etc. Nothing there. So if I were to check the system logs, how would I do that? How would I know I needed to do that?

If you mean the full Mac system log – which I’ve seen on a different Mac that started crashing a while back – it’s not like a layman can make sense of all those strings.

Yes, I mean the system log, not any avast log (that does not exists as all avast daemons use
the system log). OS X has a user friendly application for working with the system log called
“Console”. If you have any troubles with your Mac, it is the right place to start with.

@macloo post:3

When Avast simply starts blocking all but two websites in the entire Internet, maybe it should provide an error message.

Avast does provide such error message, it is written into the system log.