Apologies for the late reply and thank you for the response.
By the time I realized that I received a response I already bit the bullet and reinstalled my OS (which predictably has solved the issue, hopefully for good).

As for your recommendations, the first one I've tried (I disabled everything that made sense, including the firewall on both my router and PC as well as Kaspersky), unfrotunately to no avail.
I did not try the second one however; At least not exactly in that manner (Some rather aged information instructed doing that in IE, but I don't know how applicable that was to the present state of the game); Should the issue resurface (hopefully in won't), that wil be on the list of things I check.

Again, thank you for the response and help.