Installation failed - 6 times!!

Hello Naomi,

so it seems to be working. As for the menu bar icon - please verify that the option Show Status in Menu Bar is checked, you can see it be either ctrl-clicking the dock icon or from the Sophos Anti-Virus menu (should be near the top in both cases). If it is and it still doesn't display maybe Andrew has a suggestion.

As for On-Demand vs. On-Access: On-Demand means you tell it what (or where) to scan and when. That's how you did it in the early days of AV - you got a diskette from someone or somewhere and scanned it to make sure it is clean (of course you had to make sure you have the latest version of the AV software and the "AV-library"). Then came Autorun, all kind of "ease of use" (and later downloads, self-extractors and eventually the "Web-experience"). While it simplified things it introduced also problems. To name just a few: 1) with Autorun "something" just starts to execute before you have a chance to scan it, 2) similar self-extractors - often you can't even "see" everything that's packed inside, 3) web pages run programs and a manual download-scan-run is practically impossible. Therefore any decent AV does now On-Access scans - whenever a file is about to be opened (used, run, etc.) the AV intercepts the request, scan the file and decides whether to allow the open to proceed or not. BTW - a common question is, is(n't) it necessary to scan inside archives (or containers like email)? For On-Access the answer is no as the contents are first extracted to (temporary) files and only then "put to use" - which means they have to be opened and at this point the On-Access scanner kicks in. Of course the scanners usually understand "inside" as "content which has to be extracted to a disk file before being used". Obviously you should try to avoid exclusions (unfortunately some software is still written in a manner that doesn't go too well with scanners - similarly some ways to pack your luggage guarantee a long time spent with airport security :smileywink:).

HTH

Christian         

Hello Naomi,

so it seems to be working. As for the menu bar icon - please verify that the option Show Status in Menu Bar is checked, you can see it be either ctrl-clicking the dock icon or from the Sophos Anti-Virus menu (should be near the top in both cases). If it is and it still doesn't display maybe Andrew has a suggestion.

As for On-Demand vs. On-Access: On-Demand means you tell it what (or where) to scan and when. That's how you did it in the early days of AV - you got a diskette from someone or somewhere and scanned it to make sure it is clean (of course you had to make sure you have the latest version of the AV software and the "AV-library"). Then came Autorun, all kind of "ease of use" (and later downloads, self-extractors and eventually the "Web-experience"). While it simplified things it introduced also problems. To name just a few: 1) with Autorun "something" just starts to execute before you have a chance to scan it, 2) similar self-extractors - often you can't even "see" everything that's packed inside, 3) web pages run programs and a manual download-scan-run is practically impossible. Therefore any decent AV does now On-Access scans - whenever a file is about to be opened (used, run, etc.) the AV intercepts the request, scan the file and decides whether to allow the open to proceed or not. BTW - a common question is, is(n't) it necessary to scan inside archives (or containers like email)? For On-Access the answer is no as the contents are first extracted to (temporary) files and only then "put to use" - which means they have to be opened and at this point the On-Access scanner kicks in. Of course the scanners usually understand "inside" as "content which has to be extracted to a disk file before being used". Obviously you should try to avoid exclusions (unfortunately some software is still written in a manner that doesn't go too well with scanners - similarly some ways to pack your luggage guarantee a long time spent with airport security :smileywink:).

HTH

Christian