A dodgy Symantec update released a day before the recent Labor Day US holiday weekend, behaved as "badly as a virus", according to a user named David.

In a statement, Symantec admitted the problem but downplayed its significance.

This issue has now been resolved. The limited number of customers affected should run a Live Update to mitigate the issue.

According to David: "It costs a lot of pain before you work out it was Norton... I have 3 PCs with XP and Norton and eventually the penny dropped and I wandered onto their forums to find other folk with the same issues."

Symantec's first response to users was to upgrade to Windows 7 and to turn off browser protection.

Others expressed their angst in a discussion thread about the issue on Symantec's support forums.