My AVAST would not update, it couldn't “connect to server”.
I uninstalled AVAST, had to clear out every record of it and I installed AVG. AVG immediately found two corrupted registry files.
I was afraid to remove them until I had done searches at Google. I put them in the Vault and have had no trouble since!!
WHY Free Republic was the main site I couldn't get to is a mystery.
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Aha
I hope that fixes it
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Something like that happened to me months ago only it was the opposite.
AVG messed up and after removing every last bit of it and installing Avast, several problems were found.
Apparently no security software is perfect.