A number of Windows NT 4.0 users who updated Network Associate's McAfee VirusScan/Netshield 4.0.2 using the 4120/4110 SuperDat utility were greeted with an ominous error message upon rebooting: "Operating System Not Found."
The 4120/4110 SuperDat upgrade had in fact damaged the Master Boot Record (MBR) of the NTFS partition. The MBR contains information that, among other things, tells the computer where to find the operating system when it starts up. In one worst-case scenario made very real, System Administrator Craig Hackl reports distributing the 4120/4110 upgrade to 130 workstations on a Windows NT network and having to reinstall the OS on every PC.
Network Associates subsequently pulled the 4120/4110 SuperDAT file from the McAfee Web site and posted this notice: "The 4109 DAT and 4120/4109 SuperDAT packages have been reinstated while a compatibility issue regarding VirusScan v4.0.2 on Windows NTFS is investigated. More information will be posted as it is available."
