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Topic: McAfee Anti-Virus bad update caused BSOD in Win XP-SP3 PCs |
Wiz Feinberg
From:
Mid-Michigan, USA
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Posted 24 Apr 2010 12:26 pm |
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Earlier this week, McAfee released a flawed anti-virus definition update, numbered 5858. It contained a bad fingerprint match of a legitimate Windows operating system file; svchost.exe, which it identified as malware and either deleted or quarantined. McAfee security users who got that update before the next one was released and who ran a scheduled or on demand scan were immediately affected. Upon rebooting, or shutting down and restarting, their XP SP3 computers would only boot into a blue screen of death (BSOD).
McAfee has apologized and released a fixed update within "hours." but the damage was already significant. The average repair takes up to 1/2 hour, per computer. One major company that runs McAfee Internet Security on all of its computers reported over 50,000 machines affected and offline.
As most here are aware, I have never recommended McAfee security programs, but never bad-mouthed them either. Hopefully, none of our members were affected by the DAT 5858 fiasco, but, if you were, I can help you recover the PC to the condition it was in before that bad update occurred. Of course, you won't be asking for help from those PCs because they won't boot into Windows again until svchost.exe has been restored.
Let me know by PM if you have PCs affected by the McAfee DAT 5858 BSOD condition and I will work with you to get them back to working condition.
If you intend to search Google or any other major search engine for help, be very cautious of the search results. Cyber criminals in Russia have already poisoned the search results to lead to fake security scanners and stealth downloads of rogue programs.
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"Wiz" Feinberg, Moderator SGF Computers Forum
Security Consultant
Twitter: @Wizcrafts
Main web pages: Wiztunes Steel Guitar website | Wiz's Security Blog | My Webmaster Services | Wiz's Security Blog |
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David Collins
From:
Madison, North Carolina, USA
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Posted 28 Apr 2010 9:39 am
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Too late for me Wiz. Already had one machine trashed and had to reload win XP and restore some files.
Which anti virus program DO you recommend. (Already running Malware Bytes)
NO MORE McAfee for me.
$*# *^%$#
Thanks,
David
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David Collins
www.chjoyce.com |
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Wiz Feinberg
From:
Mid-Michigan, USA
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Posted 28 Apr 2010 12:37 pm
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| David Collins wrote: |
Too late for me Wiz. Already had one machine trashed and had to reload win XP and restore some files.
Which anti virus program DO you recommend. (Already running Malware Bytes)
NO MORE McAfee for me.
$*# *^%$#
Thanks,
David |
I'm sorry I couldn't have known about this before you were affected. Have you tried Trend Micro Internet Security yet? Most of our members on this forum have and most like it.
No security program is totally safe from mistakes. Most of the top names have had false positives over the past two years, resulting in damage to operating system files. The best thing to do is to configure your chosen replacement to alert you to suspected threats and to ask you what to do, rather than to take a default action. If in doubt, tell it to ignore, then try to fetch an update. If it was a false positive the next update may fix it, before critical files are deleted or quarantined.
_________________
"Wiz" Feinberg, Moderator SGF Computers Forum
Security Consultant
Twitter: @Wizcrafts
Main web pages: Wiztunes Steel Guitar website | Wiz's Security Blog | My Webmaster Services | Wiz's Security Blog |
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David Collins
From:
Madison, North Carolina, USA
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Posted 29 Apr 2010 3:41 am
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Running a 90 day trial version of Norton right now. So far so good with it. Will certainly check out Trend Micro.
Thanks,
David
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David Collins
www.chjoyce.com |
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