The connection error I'm getting seems to be the result of the Go.Google virus. I know this because as soon as the virus deployed on me (UHG!), none of my virus/spyware scanners would update their definitions. I tried about five of them after ad-aware failed. It's not just Ad-aware. Ad-aware has a firewall exception so it's not caused by that. The other work-arounds you suggested were already active on my machine so it's not that either.

I'd make a $1000 bet that the users having the problem with the connection error also have this go.google virus. It seems to be re-routing the DNS server or something which causes the updates to fail. It's also preventing all three of my browsers (Chrome, IE, and Firefox from displaying any webpages from the virus scanning support sites). Just nasty!

Please advise on how to manually update the definitions so I can do a proper scan and get rid of this thing. Thanks.