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Shield greyed out band 'Sophos is not running' warning since last update

Hi.

I manually updated Sophos Free for Mac yesterday, and am now getting the above warning message every startup.  The 'shield' is permanently greyed-out and in the preferences pane I can't turn 'On-access Scanning' on - it's stuck on off and the start/stop button is greyed out at 'Stopping'.

I suspect a preference file has got corrupted somehow, but is it safe to trash them all and start again?

Thanks,

Martin.



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Parents
  • Thanks ZRL1. I'm on Mac 10.8.5, so that wouldn't seem relevant, and nothing else has changed with my computer for some months. It seems to be the last Sophos manual update that's gone wrong (Auto update is 'off'.) From 'About Sophos': version 9.4.2, Threat Detect Engine 3.64.1, Threat data 5.24. From Preferences: Scan Adware and PUAs 'on'; Live protection 'off'; Web protection - Block access 'off', Block malicious downloads 'on'. Has anyone tried trashing preference files?
Reply
  • Thanks ZRL1. I'm on Mac 10.8.5, so that wouldn't seem relevant, and nothing else has changed with my computer for some months. It seems to be the last Sophos manual update that's gone wrong (Auto update is 'off'.) From 'About Sophos': version 9.4.2, Threat Detect Engine 3.64.1, Threat data 5.24. From Preferences: Scan Adware and PUAs 'on'; Live protection 'off'; Web protection - Block access 'off', Block malicious downloads 'on'. Has anyone tried trashing preference files?
Children
  • I don't know if this is helpful, but I just checked Sophos 9.4.2 running in 10.8.5 and it had threat data 5.23; everything was working. I forced an immediate update and got threat data 5.24. Rebooted and all the features are still working.

    Nothing is ever simple.[:S]

  • I manually updated to ver. 9.4.2 (on a Mac running 10.6.8 Snow Leopard) and since then the Sophos shield is greyed out and "On-Access scanning is disabled"; I haven't been able to start it from the instructions given:

    "To turn on-access scanning on or off:

    1. Choose Sophos Anti-Virus Preferences .

    2. Click On-access Scanning.

    3. If some settings are dimmed, click the lock icon and type an administrator name and password.

    4. Change the setting as follows:

    • To turn on-access scanning on, click Start Scanning. The status changes to on and the Sophos Anti-Virus icon in

    the menu bar turns black.

    • To turn on-access scanning off, click Stop Scanning. The status changes to off and the Sophos Anti-Virus icon in

    the menu bar turns gray."

    I have tried rebooting but that doesn't make any difference either and I don't know how to reinstate it.

    Any further suggestions?