Flawed AVG antivirus update cripples Windows XP PCs
A flawed signature update to AVG Technologies' antivirus software over the weekend crippled some Windows XP PCs by mistakenly deleting a critical system file, the company has confirmed.
According to messages on AVG's support forums and its own support site, an update released late Saturday for the company's security software fingered the "user32.dll" file as a Trojan horse. As per the program's settings, the AVG software, including the newest version 8.0 and its predecessor 7.5, shut the .dll away in quarantine. The result: A crippled computer.
"If you have chosen 'heal' or 'quarantine,' your PC will no longer restart," said a panicked user named "pa3bar" in a message Sunday. "It shows a blue screen at start up and tells you it cannot find winsvr, error c0000135. System recovery has no effect."
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I heard mention that the Chrome OS will have some sort of encryption available a la bitlocker. If it's possible to encrypt personal data using another password or key, then it may have potential for very secure data.... And Ubuntu has an 'encrypt home directory' option, perhaps google should follow suit.
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