Anyone Else Noticed the new Sophos?

johnshaw · #31

Over the years I've used Trend, McAfee, Sophos, they have all made similar mistakes from time to time, Sophos has no better track record than either of those companies. And Frankly, I still haven't receive any kind of direction on what to do from the Church, am I expecting too much. I still have clerk computers with this problem.

russellhltn · #32

ldsrussp wrote:Our Stake clerk basically gave the ultimatum of disable Sophos or get a new Stake Clerk. Cant' blame him as Sophos had destroyed the machine. He only has so much time in his life you know?

Unless CHQ decides on something new, I think you're looking at a new stake clerk.

#33

ldsrussp wrote:Our Stake clerk basically gave the ultimatum of disable Sophos or get a new Stake Clerk. Cant' blame him as Sophos had destroyed the machine. He only has so much time in his life you know?

I would not want to be a member of your stake with my personal information on an unprotected system. Your stake clerk should comply with Church policy. If he cannot, he should not be a stake clerk.

russellhltn · #34

Odds are if Trivoli finds Sophos not installed, it will re-install it.

My suggestion would be to change the usage pattern. Turn on the computer and find something else to do. Then leave it on until the last person leaves for the day. The biggest aggravation is when you try to hop onto the computer as soon as you turn it on.

jfackerson · #35

JamesAnderson wrote:I saw it too. The icon in the system tray will look different.

To force the update to finish, do the following.

"U" shaped shield icon has been removed. There's nothing to select in order to force an update.
...Am receiving 2 flag messages from OS Windows 7 that Spyware and AV protection are out of date (as of 19 September's last update).
...Ran both updates, associated with "Windows flagged issues" but nothing has changed.
...Manually started "Sophos Endpoint Security and Control" window. Later dragged it to task bar.
...Opened Windows Control Panel --> Admin. Tools --> Services (Local)
...Noted that service, "Sophos AutoUpdate Service" is set to Auto (load), but "Stopped".
...Attempted to start service. Error message with red ball "X"
"Unable to Start Service"
"The operation could not be completed."
"The system cannot find the file specified."
HELP!

#36

jfackerson wrote: "Unable to Start Service"
"The operation could not be completed."
"The system cannot find the file specified."
HELP!

This is very much like what I was getting while trying to discover why the Sophos system tray icon was missing on our administrative computer running Windows XP. I tried installing Sophos on top of the current installation but got install errors. Since I had not received reports from any other of the computer users of any messages or notices related to Sophos I assumed it was the Sophos false positive and that Sophos auto-update files had been deleted. The Fixing Sophos AutoUpdate after required files were deleted or moved by Sophos Anti-Virus due to a false positive page at Sopho's knowledge base has a download file, 'FixIssues.exe', that I ran following the instructions on the page. It did just as the file name said. I had Sophos running again with the latest updates in about fifteen minutes. The instructions say the file will work for Windows 2000 and later.

ulupoi · #37

jdlessley wrote:This is very much like what I was getting while trying to discover why the Sophos system tray icon was missing on our administrative computer running Windows XP. I tried installing Sophos on top of the current installation but got install errors. Since I had not received reports from any other of the computer users of any messages or notices related to Sophos I assumed it was the Sophos false positive and that Sophos auto-update files had been deleted. The Fixing Sophos AutoUpdate after required files were deleted or moved by Sophos Anti-Virus due to a false positive page at Sopho's knowledge base has a download file, 'FixIssues.exe', that I ran following the instructions on the page. It did just as the file name said. I had Sophos running again with the latest updates in about fifteen minutes. The instructions say the file will work for Windows 2000 and later.

Glad that worked for you. In my case, the FixIssues.exe successfully cleared the quarantine window, but did not fix the rest of the problem, except on one computer where we got lucky. The only fix that worked consistently was to run FixIssues.exe, uninstall Sophos, remove all traces of it using the Microsoft Fixit “Program Install and Uninstall Troubleshooter” (installing Microsoft .net framework 3.5 first, when necessary), then reinstall Sophos. The part that takes the longest is installing .net Framework 3.5 if you don't already have at least 2.0 installed, but you need it for the Fixit to work.

If you need more detailed instructions, use Private Message to send me a message with some kind of proof of your calling, and I'll email instructions to you.

ulupoi · #38

ldsrussp wrote:Sorry but this last reply sounds too much like a shill for Sophos. If you are talking about their great track record of making machines unusable then I'm with you. If you are talking about their great track record of declaring their own update system a virus, then I'm with you. Otherwise, I pretty much am being forced to peer down my nose at Sophos.

Our Stake clerk basically gave the ultimatum of disable Sophos or get a new Stake Clerk. Cant' blame him as Sophos had destroyed the machine. He only has so much time in his life you know?

I understand. I've spent about 20 hours dealing with this in our stake.

Once you have Sophos up and running again, leave your computer on or set it up to come out of hibernation several hours before he intends to use it. That way, he won't have to deal with Sophos and Windows Updates occurring just after startup, rendering his computer all but unusable for many minutes. Adding more RAM is another way to deal with the problem.

johnshaw · #39

This is a real problem and I think it is better solved by the management tools rather than relying on clerks all over the country setting up computers to turn on and off, etc... unless the Desktop Management team want's to by policy tell us to turn on computers. Extra RAM, in my opinion, is not going to help.... The idea that updates are hapenning at the same time as a scan is crazy. Updates can be configured to do other things....

I recently sat at Family History Computer and waited for a good 5-10 minutes where the computer was UNUSEABLE - CPU and DISK were being hit so hard that you couldn't even move the mouse. The RAM was only used minimally.... I have attached

: SAV-BES.jpg (20.46 KiB) Viewed 849 times

a picture of the task manager at the time - it shows the AV service and the Tivoli (BES) clients consuming in combination 100% CPU... I watched that happen for a long time.

This is not new to Desktop Management, and is certainly not new to Brian Fromm knowing the company he came from. In our Corporate Environment, there was nearly a revolt. We are a bunch of coders and a little piece of code spread through the company that anytime the 'software push' started the client was killed by this piece of code running continually in the background. We decided as an IT group to FIX the problem rather than CAUSE the problem.

What you do is pretty simple. Publish your update schedule, for example, every 3rd Tuesday we push out these monthly updates... we publish them to the employee workstations for 1 week where they can choose WHEN to do the update... rather than have them hit in he morning, they could kick it off as they go to lunch, etc... After 1 week, a prompt comes up for a couple of days reminding them... after that.... it kicks off automatically.

Having a computer that pegs the DISK and CPU for 10 minutes is very frustrating, particularly to those who have no idea what is going on. They will get the impression that the computer 'is old' or 'needs to be upgraded' because every-time they go to use it (as they describe it to you), it takes a long time to boot or let them on the system (even if it happens one time - they likely needed something quick and couldn't get to it).

It's managing a perception problem, which in IT is a great deal of what we do - and it is not that hard, but the IT perception is also important. We must think - how do I provide an exceptional and non-invasive process for providing updates and FULL AV scans?

russellhltn · #40

JohnShaw wrote:I recently sat at Family History Computer and waited for a good 5-10 minutes where the computer was UNUSEABLE

Note that FHC computers are run by a different IT department. A department that seems to have little to no presence in this forum.