Virus shuts down Dell factory.

A virus shut down Dell's Limerick production plant for two days two weeks ago, despite daily updates to its anti-virus software. The company found the Funlove virus in one part of its production system, and was forced to close the factory to contain the threat. Dell denied reports that the shutdown lost the company as much as £14 million, refusing to put a figure on lost production.

A spokeswoman for Dell UK said about 12,000 units, most of which were PCs, had to be checked for the virus. 'Most of these machines were in transit,' she said. 'Five hundred had actually reached customers, but these were recalled, checked and scanned - and we haven't found any infections,' she added.

Dell said there would be no changes to the security procedure. 'We have a fairly robust security system that is under constant review,' said the spokeswoman.

Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at UK-based anti-virus software specialist Sophos, said: 'The incident was unfortunate. This really underlines that it's not always sufficient for companies to rely solely on anti-virus software. There are new viruses coming out of the wild all the time. 'It's important to keep anti-virus software up to date. But companies should also practise "safe hex" and employ sensible measures to reduce the likelihood of infection.'

Dell uses anti-virus software from Symantec. The anti-virus software vendor said it was unable to comment on Dell's problem.

It is notoriously difficult to cure a system once it is infected with the Funlove virus, because of its ability to hide itself from anti-virus scanners and to then re-infect a system. Anti-virus software specialist Network Associates said the virus spreads unusually rapidly across servers and PCs.