A Taiwan discount personal computer manufacturer has begun a voluntary recall of desktop computers delivered to Japan after it found they had been infected with a virus before shipment.

ASUSTek Computer Inc. has shipped about 4,500 Eee Box desktop PCs to Japan, selling about 300 at retail outlets nationwide since their launch here on Oct. 2.

The computers had a file called recycled.exe, residing on the D drive. Once executed, the file would copy itself to other drives, including USB drives, and install malicious software from the Internet. This causes the computer to slow down and exposes it to security threats.

According to ASUS rep Yusheng Li, only 300 units have been sold so far, those 300 units have since been recalled.