Rumours circulating the industry are claiming that a recent McAfee update for Windows XP has caused thousands of corporate computers to shut down.

The rumours started to appear on Twitter and there have also been claims that McAfee’s own support site has been down.

The number of computers affected could run into the millions on a worldwide scale.

It would appear that DAT update 5989 deletes what’s known as the svchost.exe file which in turn then triggers a false-positive in McAfee. This then causes not only a chain of uncontrolled restarts, but a loss of networking functionality.

McAfee has apparently issued some fixes, although experts claim this is a classic case of bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted. It’s believed that McAfee has pulled the update from its corporate download servers and therefore will not affect consumers’ computers.

McAfee told the US website ‘engadet’:

“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.”

Figures from the industry say that thousands of computers have already been knocked out by this ‘bad’ update. What’s more, it has been suggested that the fixes on offer require technician time in order for them to be effective, so McAfee can expect some serious grumbling from its corporate customer base.

Guest Article by Neil Camp