Installing Sophos Endpoint Security and Control

Sophos Anti-Virus 7 will be retired at the end of March 2011. If your computer has been giving you messages to this effect recently, please upgrade Sophos as soon as possible. You you haven't used Windows for a while, please go into Windows as soon as possible and check the Sophos version. To do this right click on the Sophos shield shaped icon in the system tray. If the last item in the pop-up menu is "Open Sophos Anti-Virus" then you have version 7 or below. If the last menu item is "Open Sophos Endpoint Security and Control" then you already have the new version - 9 - installed. Instructions for installing the new version in Windows can be found here, and the MacOS X instructions are here. In most cases it is a simple matter of downloading and running the installer. However please note the following important points.

1) For laptops, follow the instructions for installing on " privately owned PCs". This is because the other versions can't update the virus definitions when the computer is outside the university firewall.

2) To find out if your Windows computer is connected to the RDG-HOME domain, click on the Start Menu, right click on "My Computer" or "Computer" and select "Properties". Select the "Computer Name" tab, or look down the page to the section marked "Computer name". Look for a line marked either "Domain" or "Workgroup". If the domain name is given as "rdg-home.ad.rdg.ac.uk" then your computer is connected to RDG-HOME, and the correct installer to use is the one labelled " Install Sophos for University domain PCs". If your computer is not in the domain then use the installer for " non-domain PCs".

3) Note the requirement for Service Pack 3 in Windows XP. If your computer has been downloading and installing Windows updates automatically then SP3 should already be installed. However, automatic updating has been disabled on many of the computers at ESSC for some reason, in which case this will have to be enabled before the new version of Sophos can be installed. To check which service pack is installed in Windows XP, right click on "My Computer" and select "Properties". The service pack version is listed under "System" in the "General" tab. Please ask Dan if your PC needs updating to SP3.

-- DanBretherton - 07 Mar 2011