Bad Panda antivirus update tanks computers

[YeOldeStonecat]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/11/panda_antivirus_update_self_pwn/

Eats itself and a few DLL in \system32 folder. Happened just before yesterday morning, had a client call with 3x computers knocked out.
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=291265

I'm massaging the 3rd one back to health, was a big Precision graphics workstation with a failed SAS drive in the RAID 1 array (pair of 15k SAS drives). So she got pushed off the cliff pretty good. Have Windows up and running...but the COMCTL32.DLL is missing or corrupt error whenever you click most .EXE files.

Took me a day and a half to find the above threads...had a feeling Panda released a bad deffy...but here's the confirmation.

 

[mrapoc]

Oh dear! I better get the word out and try to pick up some of the aftermath

 

[AndyM]

Darganit! You beat me to it!

Was just about to post

Panda antivirus software labels itself as malware

Andy

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Long thread on their support forums.....my last rig I'm working on is doing all of the behavior in this...tried replacing the DLL, regsvr32 gives same error as in thread here..
http://support.pandasecurity.com/fo...sid=b57e872586594ce2a616af93703bed92&start=80
hopefully they'll have a fix released tomorrow for it, else it will take me a week to rebuild this graphics workstation.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

//snickers at AndyM

 

[AndyM]

//snickers at AndyM

I'm not the one using Panda

Andy

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Jeeze that glitch ****** me off....
Gave up on repairing the graphics workstation...even tried a Win7 "repair install"...started getting things back into shape...got rid of the comctl32.dll error, and a few others...naturally the C++ Runtimes all needed upgrading for newer programs to work..sorted those A few newer programs that relied on .Net Frame 3.5 and 4 were crashing but figured those would sort with .NET Cleanup and a ton of Winders updates. So began the first of 180something Microsoft updates...and she went into perpetual loops...applying updates, rebooting....reverting updates...reboot...applying updates, reboot...reverting updates...reboot.

Some people within a 69 mile radius probably heard a plethora of curses come from my office around 0730 this morning....so I dropped the H-bomb on her and plowed over with the paver. Fresh install of Winders. PROBABLY what I should have gone and done last Thursday...but ya know...that bug to "repair/fix" it sometimes gets the best of ya. Try one more thing...OK...try just one more thing...maybe if I do this....sometimes the puzzle tugs at my brain and I just have to figure it out! Hate it when that happens...probably sunk over 18 man hours between two of us trying to "heal it".

So I get onsite today to set it up, install Solidworks and E2....and E2 wasn't working for them. It's hosted on a Synology NAS. I look in the shared folder and some of the .exe files that the E2 shortcut points to are missing! //scratches head. So I check one of the other workstations that survived the Panda bug (cuz it never rebooted)...and in it's quarantine were a bunch of files. So I ran the Panda fix file...and it put a bunch of files back in the E2 folder on the NAS. So this "glitch/bug" even reached out across a network and whacked files. Just an FYI for others that might be mopping up the damage from this bug.

 

[Larry Sabo]

ya know...that bug to "repair/fix" it sometimes gets the best of ya. Try one more thing...OK...try just one more thing...maybe if I do this....sometimes the puzzle tugs at my brain and I just have to figure it out! Hate it when that happens.

We feel your pain.

 

[FremontPC]

And doesn't something like this (or worse) seem to happen with every blasted one of them, from time to time.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

And doesn't something like this (or worse) seem to happen with every blasted one of them, from time to time.

Yup..generally around once a year one brand of AV or another has some bad update that tanks things. Eset used to be well known for releasing some update that tanked an infostore on MS Exchange.