Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

McAfee Kills SVCHost.exe, Sets Off Reboot Loops For Win XP, Win 2000

Posted by timothy on from the hope-you-were-using-antiantivirus-too dept.

Kohenkatz writes "A McAfee Update today (DAT 5958) incorrectly identifies svchost.exe, a critical Windows executable, as a virus and tries to remove it, causing endless reboot loops." Reader jswackh adds this terse description: "So far the fixes are sneakernet only. An IT person will have to touch all affected PCs. Reports say that it quarantines SVCHOST. [Affected computers] have no network access, and missing are taskbar/icons/etc. Basically non-functioning. Windows 7 seems to be unaffected." Updated 20100421 20:08 GMT by timothy: An anonymous reader points out this easy-to-follow fix for the McAfee flub.

4 of 472 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Black Wednesday by mikek2 · · Score: 0, Troll

    My linux laptop & I have been walking around on cloud 9 all day.

  2. Re:My Experience by gzipped_tar · · Score: 0, Troll

    So what, your corporation's legal hounds are going to launch lawsuits against McAfee? Since you USAers honor the EULA (with those DISCLAIMER texts) more than the Constitution, good luck with that.

    --
    Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
  3. What I learned at slashdot. by Beelzebud · · Score: 0, Troll

    I learned that the Apache Foundation can be hacked, have passwords stolen, and root access to their main servers taken over, and it's not the fault of the OS.

    Then I learned that if McAfee Virus scan messes up people's computers, it's not the fault of McAfee, but it's the fault of Microsoft, and their OS!

    The comments here can be so enlightening!

  4. Re:My Experience by gzipped_tar · · Score: 0, Troll

    But they say that /. is USA-centric, and anything not stated as a grossly over-generalized assertion gets modded down.

    You must be new here ;)

    --
    Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.