McAfee's anti-virus update, which took down Windows XP computers across the globe, has affected only a small percentage of its customers. McAfee has apologized for the inconvenience.

According to the statement issued by a McAfee spokesman, less than 005% of McAfee users were hit by the update, which wrongly identified a legitimate SP function as a virus and killed it. The computers were locked in a reboot loop, as a consequence.

The deadly fix passed the company's quality testing. The statement also revealed the effects on customer machines as "moderate to significant issues". The company is still trying to make out, as to how the error made it into the update.

McAfee said, "The research team created detection and removal to address this threat. The remediation passed our quality testing and was released with the 5958 virus definition file at 2.00 PM GMT+1 (6am Pacific Time) on Wednesday, April 21".

McAfee is aware that a lot of customers have acquired a false positive error due to this release. The error can result in moderate to significant issues on systems running Windows XP Service Pack 3, as per the initial investigation.

Though, the faulty update was quickly removed from all McAfee download servers, which helped in preventing any further impact on customers. The teams have left no stone unturned to support impacted customers. The company has also released an updated virus definition file within a few hours. Detailed guidance has been provided on the ways to repair any impacted systems.