So I guess everyone is having this problem? :
Yeap! You can do a full manual update downloading the VPS from here:
http://www.avast.com/download-update
It worked for me.
I tried the manual update, and my version is newer, so it was useless. Any talk of fixing this or updating the manual update?
Thanks!
Manual update worked for me. Two minutes is all it took.
I managed a full uninstall and reinstall of avast! before I decided to read up here.
Back to happy background use now.