Wow! A response from Vlk! I didn't expect that? :O Thank you very much! I was getting a little down and sad at Avast's continued random freezes. However that response lifted my spirits!
How can I be sure that the updates downloaded and installed successfully, when the updates freeze and I am forced to manually reboot?
I manually tried the update function last night and tonight. It froze on both occasions after reaching 'webshield' in step 3 for the 'update programme' function.
When I rebooted, Avast started normally and a retry of the update function returned that 'Avast is already up-to-date'.
Currently Avast says:
Programme version: 5.0.396
Virus definitions version: 100204-1
Secured: Your system is fully protected.