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 ...
Bummer ... my work has the MS site blocked ..
http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/
Or you could Google the phrase “Microsoft Security Essentials”.
That link is a loop!
I may use that in 2011. As I have already paid for my Norton, I will finish it out. But I have a problem with companies extorting me.
Kaspersky
Safe mode is what I would think.
That’s weird ... works for me.
Two words, “Avast Antivirus.” It’s free, and it stays the hell out of your way.
There are viruses that infect your computer and then hijack your browsers (including Firefox) to redirect you to a misleading sight that Microsoft "detected" a virus and this site will sell you the fix.
Don't know how many of these "we will sell you the fix" sites actually do clean up their infection but I have never seen a headline on a case on any of these sites being brought to charges.
Women, Minorities Hardest hit
That links!
Thank you, Hodar!!!!
I never go on the internet so im sure im safe
Takes a while to find out how to shut the voice up. "You're anti virus database has been updated." Was driving me nuts.
Took a day for me to figure it out, I didn’t really mind it all that much. At least it didn’t slow my PC to a crawl while it was doing it.
We use AVG business security which was recommended by a friend. Pleased so far.
Not aware of significant impact on customers? How about my estimated 10 million man hours of lost time in USA corporations? Let's call it even at $100 million, assuming you pay that to those affected.
I consulted for Cyberdefender (which is a rip off) here in L.A. and their tech guys came from Panda.
We all talked about the best AV prog: it was a consensus..
IF Malwarebytes went into the AV instead of only Malware, everyone will be bankrupt. The second AV company that everyone knows is top notch over everyone else that no one has heard of: PREVIX.
Their engineers are former Norton tech people who told their bosses their products actually DONT work and were fired.
I too recommend this program. I've been using it for quite some time and have zero problems. I've lost count how many friend's computers I "fixed" by removing Norton or McAfee. The conflicts they cause are ridiculous. And why pay good money for something when an even better free option is available?
From DSLreports forum. (Our IT guys used this after I forwarded it to them.)
1.Find a Clean version of SVCHost.exe from a non-infected machine. Place it on a Thumbdrive.
2. Use this batch file i created.
@echo off
cls
XCOPY “D:\svchost.exe” “C:\Windows\System32” /Y
XCOPY “C:\Program Files\Common Files\McAfee\Engine\OldEngine\*.*” “C:\Program Files\Common Files\McAfee\Engine” /E /C /R /I /K /Y
Echo Done.
3. Boot the machine into Safe Mode. Login as a admin account. Run the batch file. You may notice you have no start bar, and you can’t copy and paste. Make sure your Thumb Drive is D:\ or change the batch file to match.
4. This will revert you McAfee to the previous version’s DAT file.
Happy walking to the 1000s of PCs.
I had McAfee and it didn’t protect me from viruses. Norton has worked much better (holding breath).
We had to do this a few weeks ago for a bad McAfee install, basically everyone in the IT Department was drafted to go around and install the patch on every PC in the organization....not fun.
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