BOSTON, (Reuters) – A bug in an update of Symantec Corp’s anti-virus software caused some Windows PCs to crash, making machines inoperable until they were serviced in an embarrassing episode that angered some customers.
The company disclosed the problem on its website, saying that an update to its widely used Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1 anti-virus software for businesses caused some PCs running Windows XP software to crash repeatedly, showing what is known as the “blue screen of death.”
The embarrassment comes at a challenging time for Symantec, whose shares have lost about a quarter of their value since it warned of a pending profit decline three months ago.
“Enterprise security has continued to be an uphill battle for Symantec,” said Daniel Ives, an analyst with FBR Capital Markets. “There is increasing competition. The company historically has not been consistent around executing.”
Customers reported it took Symantec hours to identify and fix the bug and that they needed to fix computers broken by the tainted update on their own.
Symantec’s advisory said the company did not know what caused the problem, but that PCs could be fixed if customers manually removed the software from each disabled computer.
“Phoning Symantec support this morning was the start of the hell we went through,” one customer said in a support forum on Symantec’s website.
“The support is a joke, the quality control is a joke, and the software is not much better.”
Customers complained on a Symantec user forum that the removal process was time consuming, although one said the software maker had offered compensation for the inconvenience.
That customer said on the support site that he emailed technical support to ask: “How is Symantec going to compensate customers for the hours of lost worker production and the time and effort taken by IT staffs to rectify this huge error by Symantec?”
He said a company representative called him 20 minutes later to say they were working on a compensation package.
“I encourage everyone to ask to be compensated for the time and effort it took all of us (to) fix Symantec’s software,” the customer said on the support site.
