McAfee Update is Shutting Down Windows XP PCs

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:

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.

Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
  • ncarlson
    One of the reasons that I don't use antivirus software.
    Reply
  • tommysch
    ZOMG, good thing we are lazy on with our update schedule!!!

    I can only begin to grasp what nightmarish scenario this would have produced...

    And the face of the higher managers...
    Reply
  • rmmil978
    Awesome! Pay to have your computer ruined! That's why I use AVG or MS Security Essentials. Maybe they aren't perfect, but they're free, and both of them have successfully saved me a few times.
    Reply
  • schwiing
    So the moral is...updates are bad..wait..that's not right.
    Reply
  • rhino13
    McAfee should report itself as a virus that: Results in moderate to significant performance degredation on PCs that were running prior to its instalation.
    Reply
  • Memoscorp
    You don't need any anti-virus software if you have common sense. Don't open unknown file attachments, don't download unknown/sketchy files, don't visit unknown websites (unless you use Firefox with NoScript, but still).
    Reply
  • Zinosys
    Eset is still good for me.

    McAfee still seems to be more malware than antivirus...
    Reply
  • irtehyar
    AV software - still the worst thing to ever happen to any PC I've owned.
    Reply
  • Now which pc will be the lucky one
    Reply
  • N.Broekhuijsen
    avast FTW
    Reply