Hi all. I’m sorry, because i know this question has come up before, but I’ve read everything I can find and still can’t get rid of Sophos from my machine.
I installed it yesterday but after the reboot which is part of the installation process I had a message to say installation had failed. I thought that might have been because I still had ESET installed at that point and so I uninstalled ESET and tried again, but still had no success. Some part of the programme was on my PC (Windows 11) even though installation was said to have failed, because I was able to start the app and choose Scan, but eventually I had a message that the Scan had failed and that I was not protected. After some Googling I decided to try to remove Sophos and start again.
I disabled the Tamper thing which allowed me to click on Uninstall in the usual Windows Add/Remove programmes, but got a message that uninstall had failed as it hadn’t been possible to remove all parts of a previous version.
After more Googling I downloaded SophosZap and followed the instructions. I disabled Tamper. At the Command Prompt I did manage to run the programme in the folder to which I had downloaded it, but although after a little while it did put some wording up on the Command Prompt screen it didn’t ever tell me to reboot and run Zap again. (I’ve watched some YouTube vids and I see that other people did get that message - I didn’t.) Nonetheless I did reboot and run Zap again, but Sophos is still there. If I go to Task Manager I can see a series of Sophos things running.
I tried installation again but again, after the reboot which is part of the process, I had the message that installation had failed.
I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. Clearly SophosZap does work for some people. Here are some thoughts I’ve had.
- I know it says that the Command Prompt needs to be run as an Administrator. I just opened a Command Prompt (via the start menu on Win11) and didn’t see a choice to run as administrator. Could this be the issue?
- Perhaps if I’d waited longer at the Command Prompt after running Zap the reboot and re-run Zap message would have eventually come up? As you’ll all know, it can get confusing knowing whether something has stopped running or not when there’s no indication of whether it’s still doing things in the background or not.
I was moving to Sophos from ESET (which I’ve had for many years) because my employer has a deal with Sophos so that I can use it free, and ESET had set off alerts a couple of times at my employer’s end suggesting that my machine was infected. This is apparently a known issue with ESET and Global Protect. Because they were saying they’d have to stop me accessing the network via my home PC I decided to get rid of ESET and go with the one they recommended. This has been a nightmare though! I’ve now downloaded BitDefender as I feel very unsafe running my PC without an AV, and just want to get rid of Sophos.
Can anybody please help? 
