when i turned on my computer, clam said it needed an update, so i downloaded it, scanned it with clam, and clam itself said the update was a trojan.

or more precisely, clam said: "C:\Users\Username\Downloads\clamwin-update-0.96.2.1-0.96.4.exe: Heuristic.Trojan.SusPacked.TMS FOUND"

so, what's going on here, anyway?

Its that problem with false positives we fixed in 0.96.4 so it is no surprise that 0.96.2 reports our update as a false positive too.

Virustotal reports all clean:
https://www.virustotal.com/file-scan/report.html?id=b420338f548f03b404617bd1771830f5ca63698e56ca03bea04392d609aff1f8-1290131918

So when updated with the .4 version it will perform the scan 'correctly'? Just about everything was was listed as ... "Heuristic.Trojan.SusPacked.TMS FOUND" when I did a scan!

A word to the wise; if you have Clam Sentinel installed, do un-install it before doing the upgrade from 0.96.2 to 0.96.4, it will save you a lot of aggravation as, for some reason, the upgrading procedure corrupts ClamWin and Clam Sentinel. Once the upgrade done, you can re-install Clam Sentinel.

Now, if I could only follow my own advices!

Yes

Each new version of ClamWin has enhanced signatures that may be recognized as a false positive by older versions. Always use the latest version available.

Regards,