Dell, the computer manufacturer, is in the process of revamping its testing process after mistakes led to the delivery of motherboards with malware to customers.

The company says that some replacement motherboards for PowerEdge servers may have contained the W32.Spybot worm in flash storage. The malware affected a few motherboards in four servers, namely the PowerEdge R310, PowerEdge R410, PowerEdge R510 and PowerEdge T410 models.

"There was a sequence of human errors that led to the issue, That being said, we have identified and implemented 16 additional process steps to make sure this doesn't happen again," said Jim Hahn, a spokesman for Dell.

The company says that all the motherboards that had the malware had been taken off of the service supply chain. The malware's presence can be detected by current antivirus software with updated signatures. Running an unpatched version of Windows 2008 or an earlier version of the OS would be a requirement for the operation.

In an interview with PC World, A Dell quality management specialist says that the code was accidentally introduced during the manufacturing of the server motherboards. Embedded server management firmware detected the problem during Dell's internal testing.