McAfee Antivirus wiped out thousands of Windows XP machines

[NJmaverick]

I had 6 go down at work and only figured out the cause by the end of the day

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20003074-83.html

http://vil.nai.com/vil/5958_false.htm

[Moondog]

1. Yikes!

x(

My sympathies.

[NJmaverick]

2. It acted like the mother of all viruses/malware

which is what I thought it was until I stumbled across the news.

[texanwitch]

3. Another reason never to use McAfee.

Hope all it well with the computers.

[NJmaverick]

6. I have to see tomorrow if I can fix them with McAfee's instructions

[texanwitch]

8. One of my laptops came with McAfee, I took it off.

Did it only hit XP or Vista and Windows 7.

[NJmaverick]

10. It hit XP but not Windows 7, no mention of Vista one way or another

it wipes out the SVCHOST.exe file because it thinks it's a virus.

[texanwitch]

12. At work we got hit my Security Tools virus.

It was hell for the IT guy to fix.

[Radical Activist]

4. I've always disliked McAfee.

I guess it could have happened to AVG, but I'm glad I dumped McAfee. Its an intrusive resource hog anyway.

[NJmaverick]

15. This is the first time I have ever heard of an Anti Virus causing such wide spread

and serious problems. McAfee screwed up big time. It's going to be corporate AVG edition when McAfee licenses expire.

[goldcanyonaz]

5. That sucks, too bad Linux didn't go where most of us thought it would.

[HopeHoops]

7. I've got an HP netbook that came loaded with Linux. I love the thing.

I don't think I've rebooted it for any reason since I got it like 9 months ago. It just keeps running. It also is entirely solid state so it wakes up almost instantly.

[goldcanyonaz]

9. Yep, I administered the systems for years but end users always complained about it.

By the time they made it easy enough to use many of the interest had already died down. I thought Linux of BSD would have superseded Windows but unfortunately it didn't.

[HopeHoops]

11. Oh hell, I had KDE running on (forget which distribution) ten years ago and it blew away Windows.

This HP puppy came pre-loaded with Open Office, Thunderbird, and Firefox (among other things). I really just got it for writing in bed but I use it for a shitload more than that. Good price too, even with the double-size battery. The damn thing gets at least six hours off of one charge.

[pokerfan]

13. My next machine

http://www.system76.com/product_info.php?cPath=28&products_id=92">

[BethCA66]

14. Yikes! (GAR!)

 (Let's see if it works in the text box...)