Posted on 07/03/2009 8:11:11 PM PDT by Gomez
IT admins across the globe are letting out a collective groan after servers and PCs running McAfee VirusScan attacked core system files, in some cases causing the machines to display the dreaded blue screen of death.
Details are still coming in, but forums here and here show that it's affecting McAfee customers in Germany, Italy, and elsewhere. A UK-based Reg reader, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized by his employer to speak to the press, said the glitch simultaneously leveled half of a customer's 140 machines after they updated the latest virus signature file.
"Literally half of the machines were down with this McAfee anti-virus message IDing valid programs as having this trojan," the IT consultant said. "Literally half the office switched off their PCs and were just twiddling their thumbs."
When the consultant returned to his office he was relieved that his own laptop, which also uses VirusScan, was working normally. Then, suddenly, when it installed the latest McAfee DAT file, his computer was also smitten. The anti-virus program identified winvnc.exe and several other legitimate files as malware and attempted to quarantine them. With several core system files out of commission, the machine was rendered an expensive paperweight.
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.co.uk ...
Yeah, McAfee is a piece-o-crap anyway. Thanks for posting about the bogus CC autocharges. I had a client that reported this and wondered how common it was.
Will be interesting to see if the reported U.K. problem soon manifests itself on this side of the pond.
Joe, I too think AntiVir is the way to go. I’ve tried the big free three, and think both AVAST and AVG are terrible resource hogs.
Norton products and McAfee products are not even worth considering.
I’ve run across instances of several of the other commercial products like Live OneCare, Webroot Spysweeper and others. And in all cases, simple removal of these products would fix almost all the problems the computer was being brought to me to fix.
Very few products can remove malware after-the-fact, particularly the programs you mentioned, which are meant to be “preventers”, not removers.
Antimalwarebytes is the best program for after-the-fact removal that I’ve ever seen.
And the Comcast version of McAfee is probably the very absolute worst program to leave running on your computer. Of all the anti-whatever programs, this is the one I see most often cause really strange problems, usually causing access to random web sites to be arbitrarily (and silently) blocked.
most satisfactory and FREE.
Even if you don't require much of these computers, you would notice a significant increase in processing speed if you removed Norton and replaced it with another a/v program.
One of the problems with Norton, is that it's constantly calling home, checking for updates. At least that's how it used to operate. I haven't used it in over five years now, so maybe they changed that.
Still, I've had nothing but trouble with everything labeled Symantec. Over time, I've deleted every file I could find in my computer related to their software, with resultant improved performance.
I only use it because its free with comcast.
I wonder if this is what was up.
<it’s constantly calling home, checking for updates
Well, that’s no lie. Apparently nothing’s changed there. It is a pain.
I didn't really expect the programs to remove the virus, I just wanted to know what it was & hopefully the location of the infected files so I could go after it. That McAfee removed it, when the others didn't seem to know it was there, was a bonus.
I don't intend to leave McAfee on there very long, but the computer is my wife's and mostly used for facebook, games, and, apparently, collecting viruses.
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