It sounds like everyone’s computer nightmare… Anti-virus software (from McAfee) incorrectly flags hundreds of legitimate software programs as a virus. The virus definition update was shipped on March 10 with definitions for a wide range of new malware threats, but when the update was installed, it quarantined or deleted several widely deployed applications. You can read the complete story here.
It’s interesting to note that at one time there were at least 10 different anti-virus software packages. Similar to most maturing products, the anti-virus market has converged into three primary offerors: Norton, Trend, and McAfee. I’ve use most of these on my computer with varying degrees of satisfaction over the past few years and I have recently settled on Trend’s “PC-cillin Internet Security“.
McAfee is terrible. I had it pre-installed on my Windows Media Cetner laptop from Dell and it produced a BSOD every time. I finally switched to Trend.