The chaos predicted by some as the Conficker worm updates itself have so far failed to materialise.

There had been concerns that the worm could trigger poisoned machines to access personal files, send spam, clog networks or crash sites.

Many of the infected machines are based in Asia where there have been no reports of unusual PC behaviour.

Conficker is believed to have infected up to 15 million computers to date.

Those monitoring the progress of the worm as 1 April dawned around the globe said there was no evidence it was doing anything other than modifying itself to be harder to exterminate.

The hackers behind the worm, which effectively have all infected machines under their control, have yet to give the virus any specific orders.

But security experts warned that there was no room for complacency.

"We are going to be on high alert for a long time. Come 2 April we will still be watching while most people will have moved their focus elsewhere," said Vincent Weafer, vice president of security response at anti-virus firm Symantec.

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