Windows Explorer, one of the most crucial components of Microsoft's operating system, was quarantined earlier this week after being falsely identified as malicious code by an antivirus company.
Users of Kaspersky Lab's antivirus products noticed the issue, which Kaspersky claimed lasted two hours, on Wednesday night.
The security company's systems had decided that a virus called Huhk-C was present in the explorer.exe file, leading to its confinement or, in some cases, deletion. As Windows Explorer is the graphical user interface (GUI) for Windows' file system, this made it difficult to perform many common tasks within the operating system, such as finding files.
David Emm, a senior technology consultant at Kaspersky Lab, told ZDNet UK on Friday that the company was still examining its checklist to find out why the false positive "slipped through the net."
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