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http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1212162,00.asp
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| By Dennis Fisher
| August 6, 2003
|
| Some Network Associates Inc. customers are up in arms over an update
| for one of the company's antivirus products that is preventing them
| from accessing the Internet.
|
| The problem is caused by an update for McAfee VirusScan Professional
| 7.0, the company's flagship enterprise antivirus application. When
| update 7.03 is installed on some machines running Windows 2000 or
| Windows XP, it prevents the PCs from connecting to the Internet after
| the suggested reboot. The problem seems to be affecting customers who
| upgraded from 7.02 to 7.03.
|
| McAfee has pulled the update from its download servers and is
| performing quality checks on it, according to information on the
| company's Web site, but has not provided customers with any
| instructions on how to fix affected machines.
|
| "I am so angry with these people it's palpable. I write software and
| cannot believe they released a patch before thoroughly testing it,"
| said Michael Shohoney, a VirusScan user who said his PC was down for
| more than six hours before he was able to restore the Internet
| connection.
|
| A spokeswoman at NAI, based in Santa Clara, Calif., said she was
| unaware of the problem and would look into it.
|
| Some users report that uninstalling the troublesome patch and
| reverting to the last known good version of VirusScan restores their
| Internet connectivity. However, others say this hasn't worked for
| them.
|
| A McAfee technical support representative writing in the site's help
| forums said that the company believes the problem lies in a DLL that
| controls the Hostile Activity Watch Kernel (HAWK), a feature that
| looks for malicious and "virus-like" behavior