McAfee becomes a virus attack
Posted on 23. Apr, 2010 by admin in Software Error
Many systems were attacked this week – but not by a malicious virus.
They were attacked by their own Anti Virus, McAfee. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20003247-83.html
The latest update for McAfee had not been tested and was still in Beta phase as it was leached into the public domain. The Update affects those using XP with Service pack 3 and quarantines the svchost.exe, this causes systems to crash, Network connection fails and programmes do not respond to execution, Internet Explorer fails to execute, Drivers fail to execute such as mouse and keyboard and users are left with a system that is potentially dead.
McAfee launched a fix for this Update but as most users affected don’t have networking and can’t get onto the internet this fix is a bit of a catch 22 solution.
One way around it was to repair windows with the XP OS Disc, which return IE and Icons and Networking. Then down load the McAfee removal tool https://us.mcafee.com/root/MCPR2.exe and remove McAfee from the system.
One client lost 3 days of work as the computer affected was also the network share and without being able to access network files this limited functionality.
The reason why McAfee was removed was not because of my recommendation, it was removed because my client received no communication via – email, phone or letter to inform them that McAfee had released a Beta and they could be affected. My Client had no idea that the cause was McAfee, and as a result anxiety about files, bank details, etc came into play.
It was also noticed that windows updates had not installed properly and the system was thus unstable, for exmple, IE6 and IE8 were both on the system yet IE8 was not functioning, and McAfee was corrupt refusing to work and also could not be uninstalled through the conrol panel or McAfee uninst .
In my professional opinion McAfee causes many issues with a home pc and I advise people to use AVG which is free, or to download Microsoft Security Essentials, which is also Free. Many people use McAfee as it is installed as a 3 month trial on their new machines and I immediately remove it and install a more stable solution.
AVG can slow the computer down as it scans, and Norton 360 can also be accused of this. However, Norton Corporate is quite frugal in terms of cpu usage and ticks along without a problem. Windows security essentials requires Service Pack 2 but again ticks along without issues.
