Posted on 04/21/2010 2:22:58 PM PDT by Red in Blue PA
NEW YORK (AP) -- Computers in companies, hospitals and schools around the world got stuck repeatedly rebooting themselves Wednesday after an antivirus program identified a normal Windows file as a virus.
McAfee Inc. confirmed that a software update it posted at 9 a.m. Eastern time caused its antivirus program for corporate customers to misidentify a harmless file. It has posted a replacement update for download.
"We are not aware of significant impact on consumers and believe we have effectively limited such occurrence," the company said in a statement.
Online posters begged to differ, saying thousands of computers running Windows XP with Service Pack 3 were rendered useless.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
Oops.
So it doesn’t affect home PCs?
BTW, the file in question is svchost - sometimes it’s a trojan, but in this case it looks like McAfee quarantined the legit one(s).
one word.....Stopzilla
Stops anything and everything that wants in my pc. $10/year after rebate and worth ten times that.
How in the hell could such a thing make it through even a basic QA testing process.
my XP laptop gave me some strange message this morning about a file interrupting something or other, and that windows was shutting down in 60 seconds. It did, but i turned it back on and everything is fine. Ever since i renewed my McAfee support a week or so ago i keep getting a screen asking me to select a debugger. i try to say no and it keeps coming back. i select ok, then it gives me some error message. Any help from those more technically gifted?
Happened to our firm today...so here’s my question. We lost about 3/4 of the day in terms of production. They sent us this thing, are they going to compensate us for our lost revenue today?
I use Norton but am kind of Pi%$ed with them, as their 2010 software stops working after 365 days....where in the past you simply could not update it.
A number of years ago my former company was using Norton virus protection for all the corporate computers. I had made a number of file using a particular zip program. The latest Norton update tagged all those zip files as containing a virus. Man my phone was ring off the hook from IT dept, and from customers who downloaded the zip files off our servers.
Fortunately Norton fixed the problem in a few hours but it was quite a mess for most of the day. Not a very productive day for those involved.
“beserk” tech ping
What's the difference between that and a "protection" racket?
Let me take a moment to suggest that people take a look at Microsoft Security Essentials.
Does the same thing as McAfee, Norton, Avast and others
Is 100% free
Has a very small footprint (you won’t know it’s there, or running).
It automatically scans and updates. Did I mention it’s free?
And it’s tested by Tom’s Hardware as actually not only working better than Symantec’s 360, McAfee and just about every other pay-to-use program out there.
Google Microsoft Security Essentials and read the reviews yourself - then download it, try it; and you will pretty much be anxious to remove the other anti-virus software you are using.
Symantec/Norton is horrid bloatware, and McAffee is headed in that direction.
So how do you get the good update if you can’t boot your computer? Safe mode?
No doubt the "Terms of Use" agreement protects them from any such liability.
Intel was shut down for 1/2 a day.
Someone needs to be fired for this!
Get rid of McAfee
The link doesn’t work, at least not for me.
the big three (Mcafee, Symantec and Trend Micro) are ripe for an acquisition. Maybe this will speed things up?
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