[Bloody Sam Roberts]

I have mcAfee and haven’t run today’s updates...hummmm...

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:

1. Look in C:\WINNT\system32 to see if the file svchost.exe is missing.
2. If it does not exist, continue. If it does, you have a different problem.
3. Open a command prompt. To access command prompt if taskbar is not visible, press Windows+R key and type 'cmd'
4. Type the following and press Enter; cd c:\winnt\i386
5. Type the following and press Enter; expand svchost.ex_ c:\winnt\system32\svchost.exe
6. Reboot computer.
7. If "shutting down now" message appears, go to run command and type the following and press Enter to abort shutdown; shutdown -a
8. Reboot computer again.

My company was hit by this and this has been the fix for my desktop and many others.

[Riley]

Thanks for that. I had a mystery case come in late this afternoon, and this pretty much describes it. I’ll fix it when I get in tomorrow AM.