Many people running Windows XP SP3 and using McAfee VirusScan Plus, McAfee Internet Security Suite and McAfee Total Protection products will have had their computers crippled by a recent routine update.

The update wrongly identifies essential Windows processes as a virus and shuts them down, causing the computer to crash or reboot endlessly.

McAfee have released a fix.

My advice, don’t use McAfee in the first place – not because of this problem, but there are excellent free alternatives for home and small business users like Microsoft Security Essentials.