Is there a way to stop a virus definition download that is in progress?

Hello Rumboogy,

just below the Update now in the icon's menu there's a Cancel update (guess it's also in the HE, I'm using the corporate edition) which turns active when an update is progress and it should do what it says.

Besides - a day's worth of definition updates is a whopping 120kB on average, add an extra 50kB for synchronization data for a total of 170kB (compare this to the size of a typical web page - including all the scripts and style sheets), resulting in a net transmission time of (if my math is correct) less than 30 seconds on a 56kbit/s connection. AutoUpdate has to compete for the bandwidth with other processes and apps - guess this is what seemingly "freezes" the browser. Of course, a major (monthly) update is a different story.

HTH

Christian

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QC wrote:

Hello Rumboogy,

just below the Update now in the icon's menu there's a Cancel update (guess it's also in the HE, I'm using the corporate edition) which turns active when an update is progress and it should do what it says.

Besides - a day's worth of definition updates is a whopping 120kB on average, add an extra 50kB for synchronization data for a total of 170kB (compare this to the size of a typical web page - including all the scripts and style sheets), resulting in a net transmission time of (if my math is correct) less than 30 seconds on a 56kbit/s connection. AutoUpdate has to compete for the bandwidth with other processes and apps - guess this is what seemingly "freezes" the browser. Of course, a major (monthly) update is a different story.

HTH

Christian

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Thanks for the response.  When the problem occurs I am unable to cancel the download - the "Cancel Update" item in the menu is grey and not active.  I only notice this when I am mobile and using my cell phone hotspot.  This is not a user initiated download but an automatic one.  My cell phone hotspot can have a very low data rate depending on where I am located so even a relatively small amount of data can be very disruptive.

The few times that I have noticed this problem the following conditions have always been true:

- Using cell phone hotspot for Internet connection - data rate is most likely very low.

- Sophos for Mac HE starts download automatically.

- "Cancel Update" item in the menu is grey and not active.

- Web browser unable to load a page.

So I guess the problem that I am reporting is that for some reason Sophos for Mac HE does not allow the cancelling of updates under some circumstances.

Hello Rumboogy,

the "Cancel Update" item in the menu is grey

indeed, my bad - seems that Cancel is only available for an Update now (the Help isn't helpful here).

The only low-tech solution I see is admittedly awkward and requires some discipline - turning off automatic updates before connecting to the hotspot and turning them on when connecting to a network with acceptable speed.

Sophos for Mac HE does not allow the cancelling of updates

Obviously it's the same for all editions - you can't cancel an automatic update. Thinking about it, this is likely because cancelling an automatic update is in principle the same as turning off automatic updates. Thus Cancel would have to require authentication, can't estimate the implementation effort though.  

Christian  

Could this be added as a feature request?  I, like many users, frequently switch from high speed WiFi connections to more iffy mobile connections.  It would be very awkward to disable auto update every time. And that would present a bigger security threat than just cancelling a particular updaate in the case where one would forget to re-enable the auto updates.  So it would make the software vastly more user friendly to allow the simple capability to cancel a particular update.  This is much easier than uninstalling the software each time this happens which is what I do now.