How to fix Windows XP PCs affected with McAfee Update

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McAfee Update was at the center of frenzy today affecting unestimated numbers of PCs running Windows XP worldwide, still not estimable. The buggy security patch DAT update 5958  that the deletes the svchost.exe file, hits a false positive setting off uncontrolled restarts and loss of networking functionality. Those using Windows 7 or Windows Vista are safe. If you are one of the victims of McAfee Update you must be looking for fixes. Of course, there’s a fix available, but it has to be applied manually and requires some labor on your part. We provide a less intricate how-to for fixing McAfee Update bugs.

To begin with let’s bring the automatic system restart to halt

Step 1: Open a command prompt ( Start menu> Run, then type cmd and hit Enter)

Step 2: Type shutdown -a, which will prevent the shutdown from occurring

McAfee’s Official Fix is available here.

McAfee has launched two fixes — a short advanced computer fix and a multiple step fix for non-techies.

Step 1: Click Start> Programs> McAfee and then Virus Scan

Step 2: Right-click Access Protection

Step 3: Select Disable

In case you have Internet access you can download EXTRA.ZIP file provided by McAfee and unzip the EXTRA.DAT within.

Step 1: Click Start>Run, then type services.msc and click OK
Step 2: Right-click on the McAfee McShield service and select Stop
Step 3: Copy EXTRA.DAT to “\Program Files\Common Files\McAfee\Engine”
Step 4: Now restart the McAfee McShield service and choosing Start from the context menu
Step 5: Go back to the VirusScan Console and re-enable access protection
Step 6: Right-click Access Protection
Step 7: Select Enable
Step 8: In the VirusScan Console, go to the Quarantine Manager Policy
Step 9: Click the Manager tab
Step 10: Right-click on each file in the Quarantine and choose Restore

However, the solutions is unlikely to work, since its highly possible that you won’t have access to anything mentioned above, as deleting SVCHOST.EXE prevents key Windows 32-bit sub-system processes from functioning at all. In order, to receive EXTRA.DAT on your computer, you need to download it on an unaffected computer, copy it to either a USB drive or a CD_ROM and use the command-prompt to copy it to the C: drive.

Alternately, you can also apply the EXTRA.DAT fix as detailed above before beginning and that you have access to the second, unaffected Windows XP computer. On the computer, go to C:\WINDOWS\system32 and copy SVCHOST.EXE to a network location or a removable media device such as a USB stick. Now copy the SVCHOST.EXE from the unaffected computer to the affected computer and restart the McAfee-afflicted computer. The details on how to apply the EXTRA.DAT via ePolicy Orchestrator is available at McAfee’s fix on Nai.com.