Try to disable avast this way:

Right click on the avast icon in the system tray hover the mouse over, 'Pause Provider' and select Standard Shield. To resume afterwards, right click icon again hover over, 'Resume Provider' and click Standard Shield.

Also check the link out and see if any of it may pertain to you..

Here is a link that might be useful: Avast will not connect..

I can disable Avast couple different ways no problem to that point. The problem is I cannot connect a browser to the net with Avast disabled.

Since the email is connecting it means the DSL connection is good but something (Avast presumably) is blocking the browsers even with Avast supposedly disabled.

I'm at a loss here sounds like avast has a network function going on not sure, The only thing I could suggest is to uninstall and reinstall the program see if that helps..

Sounds like it has a proxy server function called Web Shield ? Which would likely stop functioning when avast is disabled...

soounds like you would have to reconfigure or change to no proxy settings when the program isnt running.

Here is a link that might be useful: Web Shield HTTP proxy

My problem is/was when opening a post like on this forum or especially an a MAC forum or MAC store (Apple.com) the page would come right up but it would take a real long time to load like up to 30 seconds. This did not happen on all forums or sites. Some were right snappy. I thot it might be the new antivirus programs' improvements (I spect they are all about the same) so wanted to run barefoot to see if it made a difference. That's why I tried to disable Avast, my currently installed AV. That's when I couldn't connect with a browser but could with email.

Long story short, I went to the LAN settings and unchecked "Use a Proxy server....." and 2 things resulted.
1. I could connect with Avast disabled.
2. The pages loaded fast, fast enough, or at least not with super long delays.

Restarting Avast and leaving the "Use a Proxy server..." unchecked eliminates the big long loading delay.

Now I have no idea what will result by leaving that unchecked. This is not what the MS site calls for. I can't tell if my free ZA is blocking cookies with privacy control turned on -I don't believe it comes with the free version, prolly just ZA Pro.
================================================
Another weird thang:

2. When I uncheck (ashdisp) in msconfig > start > reboot it comes back checked. And running - can't beat it to death. In fact one time I unchecked it and it came back checked but everything else was unchecked????