It sounds like your computer is infected with some kind of malware that prevents access to antivirus web sites.

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>So what you're saying is do a system restore to some time before I started getting these " ...cannot access ..." messages?
>Hmmm, This started a few weeks ago and I haven't used mt home puter much since. I got the messages a few times and put it down to a loose connection to my phone line, that was stopping my accessing the web. I'm still getting it, even though I'm online OK.
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>The AVG messages started occuring just after, I think, my current FREE subs expired.
>Now Windows defender won't update either.
>When I go to the website to manually download new definitions I get the cannot access message too. Same with AVG.
>It's like summat on my puter is saying "no more updates of any kind from any firewall/virus protection".
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>When you say " AVG update had "burped" with the same result" do you mean the same result as I've been getting?
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>Terry
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>Come to think of it, I have had a few occasions where Windows has booted and I can't get any reaction. Sometimes the mouse freezes and I've no recourse other rthan to reboot