McAfee virus bug crashes Windows

Incompatibility between a recent virus remedy file and the scan engine software locks up Windows.

Keeping virus scanning software files current is usually a good idea ... except for today.

Network Associates has confirmed a bug in the latest McAfee VirusScan's virus definition file that could cause many Windows systems to freeze during start up.

The problem is an incompatibility between a recent virus remedy file and the scan engine software in VirusScan.

For those bitten by this bug, the only solution is to boot Windows in Safe Mode and disable VirusScan's system scanning at start up. Then, when an upgraded version of the scan engine is applied to the system, the user can go back and re-enable startup scans.

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I am not sure as to the releva ...Anonymous -- 20/04/01

I am not sure as to the relevance to this but I look after a corporate network with Mcafee installed everywhere and the DAT file is 4134, the version in the article is 4102 which is quite old as far as I know

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I just installed 4.0.4226 on a ...Tom Olson -- 02/10/02

I just installed 4.0.4226 on a new system (Windows 2000 Pro) and had the same problem. The problem with safe mode, however, was that I could not start McAfee. The trick I used was to rename the installation directory and then change it back when the system booted.

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