Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition

[steveworks]

I just got my Mac back with a new hardrive and migrated all the files from my backup drive.  I installed SOFOS and stated the scan and I've been staring at the barber pole for an hour ( actually found something else to do in the meantime) and it's still calculating.  I do have two externals ( one is the TM drive and one is a disk copy ( Super Duper) but I added these to be excluded.    I also tried to stop the scan and nothing happened.  The only way I can stop the program is to force quit. TM machine is active and it did what it needed with no problems.

So what's up, why so long to "calculate"?

[TOKK777Anti]

Hi,  I have MacAir w/Lion and Sophos - Ver 8.0.5C.  I also get "barber pole" for a long time (over 15 minutes) every so often and each time I have to close the Sophos program and re-start Sophos program and after that the Sophos starts scan normally.  Is your Sophos start scan normally (barber pole shows about 3 to 6 seconds and start scanning) after re-start? 

I didn't have this type of issue on Ver 7, so I am not sure what is wrong with Ver 8.  I hope Sophos' programmers can fix this issue soon.         Thanks,

Tim

[steveworks]

I just tried it again with the same results, Barber Pole for 15 min and the only way to quit it is too Force Quit.  (again v8 and running Lion.) So you went back to V7 and that seems stable?  where do I get that?

Seems they would have worked out the kinks before releasing a new update, or is that asking too much!

I'll post me results afetr I "downgrade"

Steve

[Agile]

You'll have a hard time reverting to version 7, as version 7 auto-updates to version 8 as of July 17.  Disabling auto-updates also disables detection updates (which means you're not detected against recent threats).

If you leave it on the barber pole for an hour, does it eventually complete?  I know there was a barber pole issue with an older version where Sophos and the Apple versioning system fought with each other at the beginning of the first scan, but letting it run its course resulted in everything working correctly eventually.

[steveworks]

I've just tried this again, and it's been barbering" now for  2 1/2 hours and still says "calculating".  What next?

[TOKK777Anti]

Hi Steve,

Sorry for not responding your question earlier.  I am using version 8.0.5C  because I only need to close Sophos and re-open when the "barber pole -  calculating" takes too long.

Also after reading Andrew's comments, I am not sure you want to downgrade to ver 7.

Tim

[ananda]

I have just installed Sophos Free for Mac. I get the barber pole after starting the first scan. There is a read out of the number of files tyet to check and it always stops at the same place and hangs there. After some time either I stop the scan, which takes some time to get the message, or there is an error notice that Sophos cannot complete the scan. I uninstalled and reinstalled with the same result.

Questions are

How do I know if Sophos working now without completing initial scan?

What to do about scanning the unscanned files

ananda

[Agile · Accepted solution]

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ananda wrote:

I have just installed Sophos Free for Mac. I get the barber pole after starting the first scan. There is a read out of the number of files tyet to check and it always stops at the same place and hangs there. After some time either I stop the scan, which takes some time to get the message, or there is an error notice that Sophos cannot complete the scan. I uninstalled and reinstalled with the same result.

Questions are

How do I know if Sophos working now without completing initial scan?

What to do about scanning the unscanned files

ananda

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Sophos is running if the S shield is showing in the menu bar with a black S.  Regular scanning is "live," meaning that it scans each file as you read and write it.  Doing an initial local scan is only to do deeper scans into archives, etc. that may be harbouring pre-existing malicious files of some sort.

To avoid the initial scan issues, create a new custom scan, and only include your internal hard disk in the places to scan list.  You can create another custom scan for each external device if you'd like, or just right click on the device in the finder and select "Scan with Sophos Anti-Virus" from your contextual menu to scan it without creating a repeatable custom scan.

[steveworks]

That worked and took about 1/2 hour!.   Wish I knew about that before.  Sophos must have been tring to scan the externals which was hanging it up?    

[Agile]

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steveworks wrote:

That worked and took about 1/2 hour!.   Wish I knew about that before.  Sophos must have been tring to scan the externals which was hanging it up?    

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Sounds right; you could get into a situation where it was attempting to scan an external drive at the same time as that drive was being used by some other process (such as Time Machine).  Depending on what's attempting to interact, the USB controller could get bogged down.  Seems to me this shouldn't happen with Firewire/Thunderbolt devices.