Actually I am using a French version of AVAST 4 as well and i do experiement the same troubles.
That is to say each time the software is tying to update either its databas or itself I have a red error message saying that the soft encountered a problem to update.
There is a possibility to force the up-date. Each time I am taking this possibility, I do have a message saying that the viral database is already up to date.
I am doing this stuff each day since the 11thof November. When I am lauching manually the udpadte, I do have the same things. Moreover, when I want to see in the AVAST console, the date of the last update, it is stocked on the 11/11/2004, strange isn't it.
Besides, the number of the virus data bas is also stocked on 0446-2.
However, when I am lauching the update manually, It is saying that I have the latest version 0449-1 (I checked on the website and it appears to be the right number), strange again!??!!
So, in order to solve the problem, I had retored my windows twice, nothing is changing! I uninstalled and reinstalled AVAST, nothing new, I tried to scan my computer against viruses by AVAST 4.0, AVAST on line and another free scan on line, everything looks like it is in order.
Any idea???
PS : Just avoid to say reinstall