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Sophos Free Mac Home

chall

Has anyone out there had the same trouble I had with this software? It basically hangs my machine with spinning balls making it impossible to use. I have to power down to get back in again. Basically unworkable.

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    I've been using it on my 3 macs(1-macbook pro 1-mini, and 1 mac pro) since it came out, with zero problems. I'd just about guarantee you it's likely an OS issue (corruption) on your computer. It tends to be VERY hard to make most mac users(especially the ones that believe ANYTHING Steve Jobs says) understand this, just like most mac users NEVER thought a mac could get a virus or the MALWARE that is starting to appear.This is ALL APPLES FAULT for truly thinking they would never get bit(yes a pun on that symbolic Apple icon..LOL)

    Best plan of action is to create a bootable clone (using something like the free carbon copy cloner I religiously use) to a USB hard drive (I use WD passports). Then make sure it's bootable (boot to the external).

    After you're sure the clone works, wipe your internal HD and lay install a fresh copy of OSX from the disks that come with your mac. Run the updates for the OS only (at first). Then install Sophos, and look for issues. That way you mnarrow it down to either hardware or software, etc. In addtion, of the cases I've seen (2 or 3) it's usually a corrupted OS or hardware problem.

    If it for some odd reason turned out to be sophos, you always have your original clone which you can easily clone BACK to your internal. In the process you get to learn how to troubleshoot, and may learn something interesting and beneficial! For instance then you will have a BOOTABLE 1:1 CLONE of your system, which is the BEST backup you can possibly have for REAL EMERGENCIES...

    Just my 2 cents.

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    That might be a bit overkill for starters.

    If you have archive scanning turned on and not much free space left / not much available RAM, you're going to get the beach ball as data gets swapped on and off the hard disk.

    First thing I'd do is install AppleJack, restart the computer in single user mode, and run the tools as prompted at the menu.  This will fix any disk errors, clean up preference files, fix disk permissions, purge possibly corrupt cache files, and a few other things.

    Next reboot normally and create a custom scan of a limited portion of your drive.  Run that scan with archive scanning enabled.

    You might want to exclude certain archives from your scan, and then do a local file scan.

    After such a scan finally completes, you won't be doing many more manual scans, as the on-access scan component will scan files as they're modified on-disk.

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    Andrew

    Thanks very much for your answer. I did indeed run AppleJack and it cleaned up some issues, mainly permissions related. it also cleaned caches so not sure what that resolved. Anyway, no more beach balls. Sophos behaves well and I feel more confident than I did with Clam, which I used before this.

    Chris

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    Hi there

    Thanks for your input. 

    I had already installed a new HD in this machine and recovered perfectly from time machine. The AppleJack suggestion seems to have resolved the problem so now Sophos can sit in the background and do what it does best.

    Chris

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