Sorry if you have waited quite a while for an answer to your inquiry...
However, since your manual update is working fine you can shut down automatic updates and put a check mark in the ignored problems list as a work around so your mcafe would stay protected... however, if you do this you may need to run manual update every now and then...
Regarding the money back i think that you may need to call customer service if you purcahsed total protection online... i'm pretty sure that they'd be able to help you out on this... but mcafee total protection 2009 is so far a good product for me... as a home user i haven't had any problems with it... especially conflicting with the flash player... but i'm not sure though why auto mcafee updates would flush your falsh installation...
hope the information provided helped out...
by the way... sorry again for the delay in the response... moderators and other volunteers may actually be resting as of the moment...

grin