McAfee servers today pushed out a regular update (DAT 5958) that falsely identified the Windows XP file svchost.exe as a being infected with the virus Wecorl.a. This huge pain in the butt effected Enterprise customers. The result was after the update was applied tens of thousands computers in effect crashed. To make matters worse trying to get in to fix the problem was not easy because the affected boxes went into a continuous reboot mode.

With unconfirmed reports that big customers like Intel have been hit by the problem, that number is set to grow.

As of this writing the McAfee support forums because of the tremendous load went down. Before going offline, the company advised doing this:

1. Boot into safe mode
2. Drop the attached extra.dat in c:/program files/common files/mcafee/engine
3. Reboot normally

Then go to start — run and type shutdown /a to abort the auto shutdown. McAfee has the fix (DAT 5959) ready to go.

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All I can say is whomever wrote the code for DAT 5958 better be sitting at there desk with there hands out on the desk palms up, because teacher will be around real soon with the ruler.

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