Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition

[pkcyll]

Looking at older threads seems to indicate that Sophos has a history of stalls.

I launched a scan about 8 hours ago. Maybe 100,000 files have been scanned but the program has been stalled with 1,450,354 files remaining for most of that time.

Reading the older threads, I disabled compressed and archive scanning and the program is not scanning networked volumes. Sophos is taking about 2-3% CPU. Nothing is happening on my 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (4 GB RAM) running 10.7.3.

I had Sophos scan my mac mini this morning and while the scamn was not a speed demon, it did finish the scan within 2 hours.

Ah... down 1,450,353 files to scan. At this rate, .... 

Any clues as to why Sophos is so slow? Do I need to stop and restart the program if I made some changes via the Preferences... menu?

[greg30808]

I just installed SOPHOS 8.0.1C.  It ran for a few minutes and then stalled.  What should I do at this point?

[greg30808]

I tried to Stop Scan.  It didn't work.  I forced it and started it again.  I chose to run it with current privilages.  It stalled again.  After a while it started to run again.  Maybe the hour I waited before wasn't long enough?  Maybe I didn't wait long enough after clicking Stop Scan?  Is anyone having better luck with this software being easy to use?

I'm running OS 10.7.3 on a Mac Pro and have about 6.5 million files.

[Trish]

Similar experience--"calculating" but probably not actually scanning local drives for 3 hours.  Had to force quit.

[TOKK777Anti]

 I think we all have the same issue.  New ver 8.0.1c is soooooo slow for the Local disk scan.  Per threads "Version 8 Scan Local Drives slower than v7", Sophos employee "bobcook" may knows more about this issue.  I guess we may have to wait until ver 8.0.2......  Mean time I want to go back ver 7, but anyone know the web link?  

[TOKK777Anti]

This is update:  Per Sophos personell,

There is a known issue with the 8.0.1 release where Scan Local Drives will take longer to run. It will finish, but it goes very slowly when scanning a hidden directory on 10.7 systems.

There are a few things you can do:

1. just wait - it shouldn't really affect system performance although it will take a lot longer to scan

2. try adding an on-access exclusion (in preferences) to skip scanning "/.DocumentRevisions-V100" - its a hidden directory so press Cmd-Shift-.  (period)

3. set up a scheduled scan so you can scan your drives overnight

4. downgrade to 7.3.

So, we need to wait........ Version 7.3 is works GREAT and it is five stars!

[Rebel]

Thanks for posting that, since Sophos isn't willing to address the issue. This is important information that should be posted under Announcements on the forum

homepage!

Evidently, they didn't bother to test v8 at all, because they should have caught this immediately.

Unfortunately, I can't use 7.3, because I don't have it and it doesn't appear to be available for download here, at least I couldn't find it.

Which version works great, 7.3.9?

[QC]

Hello Rebel.

7.3 can be downloaded using here http://downloads.sophos.com/home-edition/savosx_73_he.dmg

Christian

[Rebel]

Thanks for the link, is that some secret hidden directory? I can't find that path on the site.

Not sure if I want to install 7.3, wait for another update, try ClamXav or keep running unprotected. I'd been planning to install anti-virus anyway, but the recent Java virus motivated me to git 'er done, and now I'm wasting time on the anti-virus and having other trouble that I didn't have before.

I seem to be having a few slowdowns that I didn't have before installing Sophos yesterday; I even had problems opening video files with VLC last night, and it finally froze my system and I had to to a manual reboot. Thought maybe Sophos had been tring to scan the file as I opened it. After a reboot, though, VLC worked fine again. Might have been just a system error or VLC issue, but strange that it happened shortly after installing Sophos.

[Agile]

It could be that the known issue (currently being fixed) regarding background revisioning hit you right when there was a lot of disk activity... I'd suggest trying version 7 and seeing if you like it; then wait until it auto-updates you to version 8 before upgrading.