Updates no longer happen

Question

I downloaded free Sophos antivirus for Mac a while back. I run Mac OS 10.9.5. Updates no longer happen, yet I cannot uninstall the Sophos software. All support forms mention that one needs to know which version of Sophos is running before beginning the uninstall, but I am unable to identify the version on my computer. Software is not in the Applications folder. When I select the "shield" icon in the top bar and click About, all I get is: "About Panel Product Name... About Panel Version UNKNOWN... Threat detection engine: (null); Threat data: (null) Protects against 0 threats"... So now I have a slowed down computer with no protection, and no clear way of resolving my issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated. How to I get rid of whatever Sophos version is on my computer so that I can install a (newer/better) version of software that DOES work? Thanks!

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serra · Accepted Answer

Hey Tom, 
 
Sorry to hear you're having trouble. It sounds like your install is pretty broken. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest you download and try the following removal tool: 
 
 www.sophos.com/.../eula.aspx 
 
If you're still having trouble after that, you can manually remove SAV by removing everything in the following list: 
 
/Library/Sophos Anti-Virus 
/Library/LaunchDaemos/com.sophos.* 
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.sophos.* 
/Library/Preferences/com.sophos.* 
/Library/Logs/Sophos Anti-Virus.log 
/Applications/Sophos Anti-Virus.app 
/Applications/Sophos Remove.app 
/var/db/receipts/com.sophos.* 
 
You'll need administrative rights to remove most of those files. Then reboot, to ensure everything is cleared from memory too. Then run through the list again, to ensure you got everything. 
 
Hope that helps, but let me know if you need anything else.