A quick note for anyone who uses the Grisoft AVG Free anti-virus package. I tried to run an update this evening which kept failing. I then downloaded the programme and installed it again, and it now works fine. There was a new build released on 10 Jan and this must be the root of the problem.
I have also been having trouble downloading updates for the Spybot Search and Destroy malware scanner. It turns out you can select different mirrors for the download, which stops you getting the “bad checksum” error.