@ bloody - David didn't comment on it, but hopefully you realize that the VRDB has nothing at all to do with avast defs or their updates. The VRDB is essentially data about critical files on your system, to (hopefully) help repair infected files. The Alwil team agree that, primarily because of major changes in the kinds of malware going around these days, it's pretty much obsolete now and will be dropped from avast 5. Many of us still using 4.8 have already disabled the VRDB updates.