Does the shift key in POA actual work for anybody?

Question

I'm testing safeguard 5.60.1 POA in our environment. According to the documentation, if we hold the shift key down during POST then POA should pause and we can then put in the function hotkeys, etc.

I've tried this on a couple different test PCs with radically different hardware and as far as I can tell it does not work - I have never gotten the"Shift key has been pressed" message on any machine. I've tried different keyboards, different hardware, etc. I've tried holding down after power button has been pressed, before its been pressed, just about every combination I can think of.

Am I missing something here?

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textor · Accepted Answer

Hi,

with SafeGuard Enterprise/Easy version 5.50.1 the time frame to press hotkeys has been changed. The procedure is now:

1. start the machine

2. Press and hold the "Shift" key. This must already be done before the Power-on Self-Test (POST) has finished! On some machines this timeframe is very short.

3. When the message "Shift key has been pressed. Waiting for a Hotkey ..." is displayed, press the hotkey of your choice in addition (there is a time window of five seconds to complete this)

Full information can be found here: http://www.sophos.com/en-us/support/knowledgebase/111919.aspx

All of above will work after having installed the SafeGuard Enterprise/Easy client msi and the first reboot. It is not required to have a client configuration msi. On the machines you have tested have you ever seen the "Sophos SafeGuard is starting ..." message? If not, there might be an installation issue. The POA needs to be present, you can check for approx. 100MB of bad sectors with CHKDSK.

An other idea might be to have a PC with USB disabled in the BIOS. I'd suggest to check relevant BIOS settings.

You might want to do the same test with the current 6.00.1 version as well.