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Dodgy Norton update borks UNDEAD XP systems

Securo-bods: 'Turn off browser protection... that might help'

A dodgy Symantec update brought pain for those remaining Windows XP users who rely on Norton to defend their undead operating system free from viruses.

In a statement, Symantec admitted the problem but downplayed its significance.

This issue has now been resolved. The limited number of customers affected should run a Live Update to mitigate the issue.

The flaky update, released a day before the recent Labor Day US holiday weekend, behaved as "badly as a virus", according to Reg reader David.

"It costs a lot of pain before you work out it was Norton... I have 3 PCs with XP and Norton and eventually the penny dropped and I wandered onto their forums to find other folk with the same issues," he added.

Symantec's “top tips” for resolution initially included upgrading to Windows 7 and switching off browser protection, according to David, a paying customer who was less than impressed with the security giant's handling of the incident.

Other people experienced similar pain as documented in a discussion thread about the issue on Symantec's support forums. Most reported that applying the updated crashes affected systems.

Dodgy updates are frequent bug-bear in antivirus protection that hits all vendors from time to time. Difficulties are at their worst when system files are incorrectly identified as potentially pox-ridden.

Extended support for Windows XP ended in April 2014 but the 12-year-old operating system is still widely used and there's still a business, of sorts, selling security software to protect it from nasties. ®

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