Techi - thanks for the link to AvClear. No, I do not have any other antivirus app installed (up until now with avast, why would I?
). I tried closing all apps/processes and I still couldn't use the Control Panel to uninstall, nor force avast to update.
kubecj - sorry, even though avast was still running, I was uncomfortable with the problems and not running current virus definitions especially with all the recent worm attacks. I therefore have already run AvClear and reinstalled avast 4.1 and everything seems to running fine again (just before the power went out from Hurricane Isabel - I live in North Carolina, USA). However, here is some more feedback. AvClear did NOT do a good job cleaning out the Registry. Many entries (over a dozen) were left in there. I used a good tool called jv16 Power Tools to clean up the Registry. A suggestion would be to improve AvClear's performance a bit more, though it did do enough to get the job done.
Thanks again for the help guys, and again to the ALWIL team for this user forum and support!
Cheers,
dagger