Following the widespread damage caused last week by a definition update released without proper testing, McAfee have announced that they are “committed to reimbursing reasonable expenses”.

They’re asking anyone affected to call a free support number for help.   They have a software fix available which can be downloaded using a working machine – or they’ll send out a CD with the fix if you don’t have another machine available.

Details of the refund (and a free 2 year extension to your subscription) are going to be posted here in the next few days.

If you’re using McAfee Anti-Virus protection – you want to watch out for update 5958 as it could corrupt your windows installation.

The update – released yesterday, falsely identifies a virus in a file called svchost.exe which is crucial to the operating system.    The result is that the file is mistakenly deleted, which means the PC can no longer boot!

McAfee say that they’ve now removed the update from their server to stop the damage from spreading further.

The official company blog has a post about the problem.

If you already have the update and have seen a detection warning for w32/wecorl.a DO NOT RESTART YOUR PC!    Instead refer to the following article to repair your PC:

McAfee KB Article

Looks like there currently isn’t a fix if your PC has been booted – we’ll update this post if we hear of one.