Symantec Corp, the world's largest security software provider, announced yesterday a compensation package for Chinese users for a faulty update to its Norton anti-virus software, which paralyzed many computers across the country last month.

Affected individuals users will have the period of validity for the anti-virus software extended by 12 months, and given free data backup and restoration software, according to a Symantec statement.

The updating of the Chinese version of the Norton software, which started on May 18, wrongly identified two critical files of the Microsoft XP operating system as malicious codes and deleted them, causing computers to collapse.