Posted on 04/21/2010 1:29:45 PM PDT by Battle Hymn of the Republic
Agreed!
Norton, especially with the Net and Firewall products, has crippled several I have had to try to recover.
Mcafee owns most of the corporate market share for endpoint antivirus, so this will probably be really bad for them.
now they need to find out if it was accident or malicious.
Yup. The little update window just popped up again. Told it to put any updates on hold for 36 hours. Whew!
“All you need is a firewall and a little common sense. Don’t run stuff from unknown sources and you will be OK.”
While that will take care of about 90% it isn’t a good plan. Well known and reputable websites get hacked. If you visit them your computer will be infected without some kind of defense. This bypasses the firewall because it rides port 80 through your browser, which is enabled.
Avast, AVG and Comodo are all good.
AVG misses 5.8% of current malware.
The best misses 0.4% (G.DATA) and the best free one misses 0.7%.
http://www.av-comparatives.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=144&Itemid=152
Yep - this one has hit my outfit as well. Nasty. And it was out far earlier than the article claims.
Don't let it update your definitions! You'll get horked for sure.
For those affected, the problem is that Macafee ends up deleting the svchost file from the WINNT\system32 directory.
If your taskbar is missing and your desktop just doesn't look right, you have been affected by the Macafee definition update that has deleted the svchost.exe file from the WINNT directory.
This is the fix:
My company was hit by this and this has been the fix for my desktop and many others.
Now the computer won't even boot up in safe mode...It was 8 years old...now it awaits a trip to the recycle bin.
I beg to differ, but AV-comparatives.org has done a recent test on Avast and Comodo.
On Avast, it last tested in August of last year and it missed 2% of all then-current malware, versus 0.2% for G.DATA and 0.6% for Avira (the free one doesn’t miss any important stuff from their retail one).
http://www.av-comparatives.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=144&Itemid=152
Has not bothered my Linux machine.
I shall check them out.
Several years ago I used McAfee. It was okay, but became bloatware and slowed my system to a crawl.
About that time, they offered a ‘free’ firewall program. I installed it. Didn’t like. Uninstalled.
Every 2-3 months, I would get a pop-up asking me to re-try the firewall.
I deleted everything McAfee I could find on my system. I even scanned the registry and deleted everything McAfee.
The pop-up persisted.
The only was I finally got rid of it was when I had to reformat the drive and reinstall Windows due to some driver conflicts caused by/with Real Player and my PCTV card.
I will never allow McAfee on any computer of mine!
[My cable internet offers it free for clients, but I am currently using Avast! which I like.]
If you have kids, it's best to put them on their own machines and on their own network, so their computers can't get to yours without going through your firewall. Kids' curiosity exceeds their judgment. And be sure not to let them use any computer you use for anything sensitive, like banking / brokerage or work.
Now the computer won't even boot up in safe mode...It was 8 years old...now it awaits a trip to the recycle bin.
You could probably rescue it by reinstalling XP from scratch ... if you wanted to.
“Now the computer won’t even boot up in safe mode...It was 8 years old...now it awaits a trip to the recycle bin.”
If you’re going to do that... might you be willing to give Linux a try on it? Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com) is an easy-to-use variant that might breathe some new life into that now-dead PC.
Some of the anti-virus programs are worse than the viruses. They believe their program is more important than anything you might be using your computer for and dominates your processor.
I’ve been happy with AVG and Zone Alarm at home but my work computer gets hijacked all the time by Windows and Norton updates and to hell with you if you can’t sit there and wait on them to do their thing.
I don’t run McAfee. I use . . . but that would be telling.
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