14 DAY TRIAL // Panda Security released a tool for manually fixing the computers rebooted after having received a faulty signature update, which turned its antivirus retail products into useless packages of files.
On Wednesday, the antivirus vendor announced on its support page that a troublesome signature file had been pushed to PCOP (Panda Cloud Office Protection) and retail clients, and it advised against restarting the workstations.
Once applied, the bad file would erroneously mark as malicious items essential in keeping the antivirus functioning and would move them to quarantine. The file was pulled and the company deployed an automatic fix in the evening (21:20 CET), fixing the issue with the falsely quarantined data.
Vendor builds utility, releases instructions for solving the issue manually
However, plenty of customers had already restarted the machines and faced problems with booting into the operating system. This did not occur in all cases, as others reported issues with connecting to the Internet, thus making the automatic fix from Panda useless.
About an hour ago, the company announced on Twitter that a manual fix was released on its support page for these customers. At the moment, there are instructions for both those who can boot normally into Windows and those who cannot log into the operating system.
A similar procedure and the same tool has to be used in both cases, the only difference being that systems that do not boot normally have to be started in Safe Mode (this is achieved differently depending on the operating system and computer brand). Fixing the issue is nothing complicated and clear instructions are provided by Panda Security.
Some users have trouble repairing the problem
The products impacted by the glitchy signature file are Panda Cloud Office Protection (both regular and advanced), Panda Antivirus Pro 2015, Panda Internet Security 2015, Panda Global Protection 2015 and Panda Gold Protection 2015.
After facing the consequences of the botched update, many Panda Security customers complained about the issue online. On Reddit, one system administrator said that the employees at his firm had to be sent home because the workstations could no longer be used.
Another admin said that hundreds of end users were unable to work as a result of the problem.
Hopefully, the remedy works for everyone impacted, although one user reported trouble running the tool on account that a DLL was missing from the system. It appears that he is not the only one.
@Panda_Security I have this error when I try to run the ps-recovery.exe patch file on a Work stations. pic.twitter.com/BfPUUvygJX
— Mathieu Christen (@Theroxat) March 12, 2015
