McAfee wreaks havoc with faulty antivirus update

In today's podcast: McAfee wreaks havoc with faulty antivirus update; HP to refresh Integrity server lineup; and Group petitions DOJ for antitrust investigation of Google.

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A flawed McAfee antivirus update sent enterprise administrators scrambling today as the new signatures quarantined a crucial Windows system file, crippling an unknown number of Windows XP computers, according to messages on the company's support forum. McAfee confirmed it had pushed the faulty update to users earlier today. Affected PCs have displayed a shutdown error or blue error screen, then gone into an endless cycle of rebooting. McAfee reacted by warning users not to download today's update if they haven't already, and by posting recovery instructions and a signature update to suppress the defective one seeded to users earlier.

Hewlett-Packard is gearing up for a major refresh of its Integrity server line, an important step for customers using those systems and also for the future of Intel's high-end Itanium processor. HP wouldn't discuss the products ahead of a press conference scheduled for Tuesday next week. But it has hinted that Intel's quad-core "Tukwila" processors, launched in February, will allow it to update its Integrity servers with a more modern, modular design that lets customers scale them more easily and reduce ownership costs. Aside from slightly faster processors, HP hasn't made significant changes to most of the systems since the Integrity brand was introduced in 2003.

The U.S. Department of Justice should launch a broad antitrust investigation into Google's search and advertising practices and consider a wide array of penalties, including possibly breaking the company up, a consumer group said Wednesday. Consumer Watchdog, along with a mobile entrepreneur and two lawyers representing Google rivals, all called on the DOJ to initiate an antitrust investigation focusing on a number of issues, including Google's marriage of search results to advertising and its book search service. A DOJ spokeswoman declined to comment on Consumer Watchdog's request.

Salesforce.com said Wednesday it has signed a deal to buy Jigsaw, a cloud-based vendor of business contact data, for roughly US$142 million in cash. The acquisition, which appears to be one of Salesforce.com's largest to date, is scheduled to close later this year. The acquisition will allow Salesforce.com and its partners to create new applications that use Jigsaw's data, which is collected via a crowdsourcing model. Users contribute their own information and earn access to more records by helping to keep data accurate. The vendor also sells batches of data to companies and offers a data-cleansing service.

...And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I'm Sumner Lemon in Singapore. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.