McAfee has released a fix for a flawed virus update that disabled millions of Windows XP computers. The McAfee update caused uncontrolled PC restarts and loss of network functions for both enterprise and home users. Many McAfee customers were more upset by McAfee's failure to communicate and a lack of support as they waited for hours.

 

McAfee is backpedaling from an update that wreaked havoc for Windows users. The flawed update has the company's support team working around the clock to fix the problem.

The trouble began Wednesday when McAfee pushed out a virus update after identifying a new threat to Windows PCs. The update, which passed quality testing, created a problem for a some enterprise customers and home users of the company's VirusScan Plus, Internet Security Suite, and Total Protection products.

"In our ongoing efforts to protect our customers from a seemingly endlessly multiplying variety and volume of attacks, today we released an update file that clearly did more harm than good," said Barry McPherson, McAfee's executive vice president of worldwide technical support and customer service.

"This all relates to the McAfee update for Microsoft Windows XP with SP3, and provides users with a false positive detection of virus 'w32/wecorl.a'," said Jart Armin, a security expert with Host Exploit. "Ultimately it results in uncontrolled restarts and loss of networking functionality for the PCs updated."

Cleaning Up

The update was removed from McAfee's download servers within hours in order to stop any additional impact on customers, McPherson said.

While McAfee reported the error impacted only a moderate number of customers, reports show the error wreaked havoc on millions of personal computers. "Current community estimates reveal around 2.5 to 3 million PCs affected worldwide," Armin said.

McAfee on Thursday released a fix for both home and business users. Home users can access directions at http://service.mcafee.com/faqdocument.aspx?id=TS100969 and business users at http://vil.nai.com/vil/5958_false.htm, but it requires a techie to personally fix each PC, Armin said.

"Mistakes happen. No excuses. The nearly 7,000 employees of McAfee are focused right now on two things," McPherson said. He said the plan is to first help customers who have been affected to get back to business. Once that is done, McAfee plans to put processes in place to avoid errors similar to this one from happening again.

"Best advice, if you have not yet, do not implement or run the McAfee update of 04/21/10. If you have the blue screen of death as a result of the update, grab a techie and pray," Armin said.