Hello. I've been having trouble connecting to other players in almost all of my online games. When I attempt to CONNECT to other players, my computer is unable to locate remote servers. The searchs end in time-outs every time. Additionally, if I host a server, it is invisible to others. For some games, I'm ABLE to scrounge up a work-around, but my preference would really be to resolve the underlining problem. Outside of the context of online games, my computer has no problems accessing the internet.

My computer is a personal gaming desktop that connects to the internet wirelessly. It has Avast! as its active anti-fire, but disabling and/or uninstalling the program (along with the Windows firewall) has had no impact on the issue. I have also used other anti-VIRUS software on the same machine in the past, which has since been removed. (I know that many anti-viruses leave files behind after being installed, so perhaps that is a place to start?)

Here are some games that have given me this problem:
World of Warcraft: Eventually, I was able to manage a work-around by putting the game into 32-bit. According to their support department, a virus inhibits the game's ability connect with online servers in 64-bit. However, my computer is virus-free as far as I know, and the problem persisted even after scrubbing the system with an anti-virus.
Nether: I managed a work-around for this game as well, but I can't recall how I did it.
ARK Survival Evolved: The object of my current struggle. I've made no progress on this one yet.
Any Steam Servers: When I click to join a server, a window flashes up for a moment before immediately disappearing. I assume this is a manifestation of my computer attempting to form a connection and immediately failing.

I've seen some CHATTER about this issue being fixed by reinstalling Windows 7, but I'd rather dodge that bullet to the head if I can. So, I come to you with the faint hope that there might be an alternative. Even if walking backwards to FACTORY defaults is the only choice, I would still be interested to know what caused the dilemma in the first place. Any help would be very much appreciated. If you ping www.google.com -T from command shell and leave it running for about 5 minutes while watching for problems does it show any problems with failed pings or excessive latency?