Jwall, you hit the nail on the head. Even after two repairs of avast 5.1.889, I got the same error. When VPS 110113-1 became available, Avast was aware of the update, but wouldn't update.
In Avast Settings | Updates under Proxy Settings, I had Direct Connection checkmarked. On changing it to Auto detect (use Internet Explorer settings), avast updated the VPS. With Auto Detect Proxy, avast now tells me that I am running the latest program and VPS version. There are no proxy settings in Internet Explorer at all, and direct connection (no proxy) has worked in all previous versions of Avast, including v4.x.
See if this helps..
Gopher John is the author of the quote above.
Silk0, good job! That fixed it, man! Thanks for passing that solution along.
I noticed that yesterday, MBAM did an IP block on an avast update server, and even though I was able to go back into MBAM and place that detection in the Ignore folder, I thought that somehow the two things might be connected (MBAM blocking avast update server and avast not updating).
So now I have Proxy Settings configured differently on my two machines... Direct connection on one and Auto detect on the other. I may go back and reset Auto detect to the original Direct connect, just to see if it fails again.
But again, thank you for the perfect solution (and thanks to Gopher John too).
PS- Now that I am properly updated, I just tried setting Proxy Settings back to original Direct connect, and the same old error message pops up when I look for updates. So I'll leave well-enough alone.