Symantec claims to have fixed PC-crashing anti-virus update

Symantec has promised that it has fixed a bug in an anti-virus update issued last week that caused a number of Windows PCs to crash.

The problem occurred on Friday when the company released updates for its widely used Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1 and Norton anti-virus software for businesses.

The updates caused a number of PCs running Microsoft Windows XP software to crash repeatedly, bringing up the infamous "blue screen of death."

Symantec has confirmed that it has issued a fix for the crash bug, but declined to comment on whether it would be offering affected customers compensation.

"Symantec is aware that a subset of some of its Microsoft Windows XP desktop users may have experienced ‘blue screen' issues," said Symantec in a statement sent to V3.

"Symantec has determined that the issue was limited to machines running a combination of Windows XP, the latest version of the SONAR technology, the 11 July rev11 SONAR signature set and third-party software. New definitions were rolled out shortly after to correct the issue. Since then, no new customer issues have been reported from the field."

The company has confirmed to V3 that the majority of affected users where enterprise customers.

"Approximately 300 Enterprise customers cases were logged. We have taken cases from about 60 consumer customers and 5 cases from SMB customers," Symantec told V3, via an emailed statement.

The news comes during a difficult point for Symantec, with the firm's shares having lost roughly a quarter of their value over the last three months.

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• Symantec
• antivirus
• security patches