Hi Charlie
Thanks for asking. And glad to hear you are up and running again.
Got a call yesterday pm.
As you said he would, the guy tweaked the subscription date (got an extra day, but 14 days would have been better given the length of time it took to fix) and hey presto! updates started and all seems to be well.
Will be keeping an eye on the updates until I get my confidence back in McAfee.
Am left unable to use IE8 as, since McAfee played with it on an earlier live chat, I am left with it in Unprotected Mode, until I reset it back to factory settings.
Am quite liking Google Chrome in the meantime!