Flawed McAfee Update, Buggy McAfee update whacks Windows XP PCs

McAfee's popular antivirus software failed spectacularly on Wednesday, causing tens of thousands of Windows XP computers to crash or repeatedly reboot.

A buggy update that the company released early in the day turned the software's formidable defenses against malicious software inward, prompting it to attack a vital component of Microsoft Windows. The update was available for business customers for about four hours before distribution was halted, McAfee said.

The damage was widespread: The University of Michigan's medical school reported that 8,000 of its 25,000 computers crashed. Police in Lexington, Ky., resorted to hand-writing reports and turned off their patrol car terminals as a precaution. Some jails cancelled visitation, and Rhode Island hospitals turned away non-trauma patients at emergency rooms and postponed some elective surgeries.

Intel was also hit by McAfee's bungled update, a source inside the company confirmed to us. The source said that all Intel's computers inside the United States ran McAfee and many were affected, but didn't know how many or whether it impacted the company's factories.

The update releasted at 6 a.m. PT effectively redirected the PC's immune system, causing it to attack a legitimate operating system component known as SVCHOST.EXE in the same way that some diseases can cause the human immune system to turn inward. In this case, McAfee's application incorrectly confused it with malware known as the W32/Wecorl.a virus.

McAfee has posted a Web page on a separate site with detailed instructions on how to fix XP computers that have been crashing because of Wednesday's update. It recommends manually downloading and installing an "EXTRA.DAT" file, and then restore files that have been incorrectly quarantined.

But that option requires a least a modest amount of technical ability, and as of 4 p.m. PDT, the company had not offered a better way. "McAfee is continuing to work on an automated solution," the page said.

 Source: CNET News

Note: This is one of the reasons why I stop using McAfee antivirus over five years ago. McAfee software at one time was very good, but now the software is bloated and seems to cause more trouble than it stops. There are many free antivirus programs on the Internet that you can download it for free. So I encourage you all to consider removing McAfee software and trying one of the other free antivirus programs on Internet.