Guest User!

You are not Sophos Staff.

Thread Info
  • State Not Answered
  • Locked Locked
  • Replies 6 replies
  • Subscribers 9 subscribers
  • Views 3348 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Suggested
This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Sophossetup.exe fails with Windows 7 clients

John Kingham

 I recently upgraded to Sophos Central at the school where I am an IT Technician.  Running the Sophossetup.exe program to install the Endpoint software worked fine on Windows 10 clients, but failed on all Windows 7 clients.  Running the migration tool on the server to upgrade from Sophos Enterprise Console had a similar result - all Windows 7 clients failed.  Looking at the logs it was evident that the Windows 10 clients were using the winhttp proxy settings already existing on the clients and were using this to create a link to the downloads.sophos.com site correctly.  On Windows 7 clients the winhhtp proxy settings were being ignored and the Sophossetup.exe program was trying to create a connection without using the proxy and failing.  So I tried to run 'Sophossetup.exe /?' to see if it would tell me of any command line options which I could use.  Having found these I then ran the command 'sophossetup --proxyaddress=proxy.luton.ifl.net:8080' which completed the installation of the endpoint software without a hitch.  Having got this far, I created a script to automatically check when users log in whether Sophos Endpoint was already installed, and if not to install the Sophos Endpoint software using this command line.  So I have got round the problem, but I would like to ask why the Sophossetup.exe program ignores winhttp proxy settings which already exist on Windows 7 clients?



This thread was automatically locked due to age.
  • 0

    Is this an explicitly set proxy or auto detect?

    I wonder if it's not set for 32-bit process on the Windows 7 computers.  I assume they are all 64-bit computers?

    If you run in an admin prompt:

    CD C:\Windows\SysWOW64

    and then run the 32-bit netsh.exe command:

    netsh winhttp show proxy

    Does this show the proxy setting?
    Does this look different on the Win 10 computers?
    If you set the proxy using the 32-bit netsh on what I assume are 64-bit computers:

    netsh winhttp set proxy proxy.luton.ifl.net:8080

    Does it pick it up then?

    Regards,

    Jak

  • 0 in reply to jak

    Sorry, but school has shut down for the Christmas break, so I cannot do any tests at school!

      Answers I can give are as follows:

    1. The winhttp proxy is set explicitly by group policy and without it, Windows updates will not load.  It is set using the 'netsh winhttp set proxy...' command.

    2. I have remote access to the server, which is Windows 2008R2, similar to Windows 7, and on this if I ran in an admin prompt:

    CD C:\Windows\SysWOW64

    and then ran the netsh.exe command:

    netsh winhttp show proxy

    no proxy is displayed (direct access).

    If I revert back one level to the c:\windows directory and rerun the command, then the proxy is displayed:

    C:\Windows>netsh winhttp show proxy

    Current WinHTTP proxy settings:

    Proxy Server(s) : proxy.luton.ifl.net:8080
    Bypass List : 10.*

    3. On a Windows 10 PC I tried setting a proxy using the

    netsh winhttp set proxy test

    command.  It then didn't matter which directory I was in, whether c:\windows\syswow64 or any other, the proxy was displayed correctly,  and whenever I ran the command 

    netsh winhttp reset proxy

    the proxy was reset correctly, for all locations.

    It seems then the problem is related to the different way Windows 7 and Windows 10 treat winhttp proxies?

  • 0 in reply to John Kingham

    OK, TBH, it might be worth running both the 32 and 64-bit netsh commands to set the proxy.  This will ensure that both 32-bit and 64-bit processes that use the WinHTTP library will get the correct configuration.

    Regards,

    Jak

  • 0 in reply to jak

    Sorry, I missed out on the last post that all PCs and laptops run 64bit versions of Windows.

    Agree with your action, but it begs the question as to why SophosSetup.exe is looking for 32 bit versions of the Winhttp proxies on 64 bit software.  indeed I was not aware till today that there were separate 32 and 64 bit Winhttp proxies and that they were different, and I don't think I can be the only one with this problem.

    Regards,

    John Kingham

  • 0 in reply to John Kingham

    The installer is 32-bit and so is sophosupdate.exe which is part of AutoUpdate.

    Regards,

    Jak

  • 0 in reply to jak

    Can I ask another question: why does Sophossetup use the winhttp proxy as opposed to the standard windows proxy which is configurable from almost any web browser?  It seems to me that if Sophossetup.exe and sophosupdate.exe are 32bit we have uncovered a serious problem for the use of Sophos on 64bit versions of Windows 7.  Which proxy does sophosupdate.exe use? 

    Kind regards,

    John Kingham

Unfiltered HTML