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Blue Sophos Shield/Black Sophos shield question

Melody

I forgot an important part of the question I posted earlier-- I installed Sophos today, but the Sophos shield on my toolbar is not black,  but blue.  I have it the preferences set  to have it always be background scanning,  but I'm not sure if that is working.  I'm sure Sophos is installed and active,  because I did do a manual scan of my whole computer right after I installed it.    That  took a very long time but worked.

How can I test to see if it is in fact performing background scans?   And if it isn't, even though the preferences are set for that, how might I correct this & get it to work properly?

Thanks for any help/answers. 

:1000449


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    You can test your AV by visiting www.eicar.org. Here you can download a very small text file called eicar, which although not a virus is designed to look like one to AV engines. Its perfectly save and is widely used for simple testing. Indeed, I believe the files was originally written many years ago by Paul Ducklin, a Sophos Employee.

    :1000455
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    Hello Melody,

    I'm not a Mac expert (in fact I've not yet found out how to do a right-click :smileytongue:) but as (former) technician I believe in correct technical terms. I think - please correct me if I'm wrong - what you mean by background scanning is in fact on-access scanning. Enough nitpicking. Now I'm not sure what you mean by toolbar, I see a blue icon (the one showing the yellow exclamation mark when a threat is detected) in the dock. The black/grey icon is in the menu bar. Incidentally I didn't see it when I just checked - it turned out that it wasn't turned on (dunno why, can't remember I configured it). To make it visible go to Preferences -> Messaging and select Show Sophos Anti-Virus status in the menu bar. This will display the icon which correctly turns grey when you stop on-access scanning (BTW: in case updating fails the icon will turn into a white cross in black/grey depending on the on-access status).

    HTH

    Christian

    :1000457
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    Thank you Christian!  I am very aware of the importance of precise language, and as  am always embarrassed & a little frustrated when I need to talk to a computer technician,  because of my ignorance of the vocabulary.   Yes,  I did mean" on-access scanning", and no you were not nitpicky but rather informative in pointing this out.  And, horray, there is a black icon in the "MENU BAR"  (!!!)-- the blue one is in, of course, the dock.  You've cleared this up for me and I appreciate it.

    :1000459
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    Christian,

    That's correct, there are two Sophos icons which mean different things.

    The black shield icon appears in the menu bar at the top of your screen (along with icons such as Airport, the clock etc). This shows that Sophos is installed and protecting your computer, and there all the time (as long as SAV is installed).

    When you open the Sophos Application, for example to run scans or view the Quarantine Manager the blue icon will appear in your dock (usually at the bottom of your screen) like any other application would. When you have finished running your scan or dealing with the Quarantine Manager, you can quit and it will disappear from the dock. The black shield icon will still remain in your menu bar, meaning you are still protected.

    Joe

    :1000461
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    Thanks for your answer Paul.  I think QC cleared this matter up for me,  but I shall save your answer in case I ever need to do it!

    :1000463
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    Oops.... the blue shield does NOT disappear from my dock.  It's permanently there.   

    :1000465
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    That's also fine. If you right-click on the icon (or hold down ctrl and click if you have a mouse with one button) you can bring up a menu to keep the icon in your dock or otherwise (for easy access). This is true for any application icon on the dock.

    :1000467
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    What a great forum!  Thanks

    :1000469
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    When i log out and log in again the black status bar icon on my mac has dissapeared? I checked my settings and it says im protected but i cant get the black icon to show again ? I like this product but i cant see the icon and im not convinced my mac is protected. Please help?

    :1003879