McAfee Update is Shutting Down Windows XP PCs
There's was trouble packed in with recent McAfee update for Windows XP.
A bad update issued today for McAfee for Windows XP is causing computers worldwide to shutdown and sent itself in a loop of restarts. Engadget received the following statement from McAfee regarding the continuing incident:
McAfee is aware that a number of customers have incurred a false positive error due to incorrect malware alerts on Wednesday, April 21. The problem occurs with the 5958 virus definition file (DAT) that was released on April 21 at 2.00 PM GMT+1 (6am Pacific Time).
Our initial investigation indicates that the error can result in moderate to significant performance issues on systems running Windows XP Service Pack 3.
The faulty update has been removed from McAfee download servers for corporate users, preventing any further impact on those customers. We are not aware of significant impact on consumer customers and believe we have effectively limited such occurrence.
McAfee teams are working with the highest priority to support impacted customers and plan to provide an update virus definition file shortly. McAfee apologizes for any inconvenience to our customers
The story is that the DAT update 5958 deletes the svchost.exe file, which then triggers a false-positive in McAfee itself. Early estimates say that this has affected between 30,000 to 60,000 machines so far.

Your obviously a Mac user since any self respecting Linux user admits that Windows is the primary target for spyware and viruses because of its large user base.
Since your a Mac user, why don't you go to Starbucks and work on your novel or some hippy crap. Leave Toms Hardware to the big boys who can actually change their computer hardware and do something useful with it.
McAfee still seems to be more malware than antivirus...
I can only begin to grasp what nightmarish scenario this would have produced...
And the face of the higher managers...
McAfee still seems to be more malware than antivirus...
That's one of the reasons I don't use windblows
Your obviously a Mac user since any self respecting Linux user admits that Windows is the primary target for spyware and viruses because of its large user base.
Since your a Mac user, why don't you go to Starbucks and work on your novel or some hippy crap. Leave Toms Hardware to the big boys who can actually change their computer hardware and do something useful with it.
Cool. Oh, while you're at it, visit this site. "www.linuxappleandfreebsdOShavesecurityflawstoo-letmeproveit.com"
Get over the smug 'nothing can hurt my computer' attitude, unless you plan on never using the Internet for the rest of your life.
Or more specifically, those who use their computers to work for a living.
What does it matter the reasoning for the excess viruses? Windows is more susceptible to getting viruses. There are a multitude of reasons why but those reasons don't really matter. There are less viruses for OS X. You have a much smaller chance of getting a virus on a Mac than you do on a PC. Case in point, the Mac Lab at UT is up and running. All the other computer labs including the engineering lab is still down.
At my current job, we dumped McCrapee and went to NOD because of bloat.
Even COMCAST has dumped their free McCrapee program and gone to Norton.
McCrapee's list of customers seems to be dwindling...