Disabling Sophos Competitor Check on deploy (upgrade)

Hello Azurus,

you have probably read this thread on how to "customize" the removal, haven't you?

SuppressCompetitorDetection works for me (although I've installed a free product for testing but as no avremove.log has been produced I'm sure it did not run at all). Of course the path for the key has to be changed on 64bit systems and I'd like to point out that - contrary to one's expectation - it has to be a REG_SZ value.

machines are unable to perform the upgrade

I think I'm missing something here - isn't the CRT only invoked when you deploy (using setup.exe) but not when AutoUpdate performs regular updates? Why do you have to deploy the new version instead of letting AU do the work?

Christian

Thanks for the reply QC, I have tried both ways. I also did see that article. 

Originally I tried the Auto-update way, relying on the subscription change to 9.7 Recommended. Like clock-work, the machines with CSA installed failed, while the machines without it installed perfectly.

So I then tried deploying from the console while unchecking the 3rd party removal tool upon deployment with no luck. A different error resulted from the same reason (similar software found).

I have since then attempted to use the registry settings on the host PC that I mentioned, but the auto-update and deploy from console still will not upgrade to 9.7.

I also have sent an email to naconsulting@sophos.com regarding using an hour of consulting time for this issue, which may require a more in-depth look. I sent the email yesterday morning and have not heard anything back yet. In the meantime, I have over 400 endpoints not getting updates.

I have just tested and confirmed that removing the CSA reg key allows the regular "Update" function to trigger the 9.7 install based on the subscription.

I have triggered the update manually on a host and it upgraded, as well as triggered it from the console and it upgraded. Basically neither the update nor deploy will work unless I delete Cisco CSA reg key.

As far as the reg keys I"m adding are concerned, do these only affect deployment? or do they affect update install triggers as well?

I added the following keys as REG_SZ values of 1. Doesn't have eny effect on the deployment or update install triggers.

HKLM\Software\Sophos\SAVService\SetupOptions\SuppressPreSAVCDT = 1

HKLM\Software\Sophos\SAVService\SetupOptions\SuppressCompetitorDetection = 1

When I was speaking with a technician on the phone, he mentioned that Sophos does two checks, and that if it fails either one, it will trigger the "Similar software installed" failure. From what it seems like, all my solutions may only be addressing one of the two checks. I need to figure out where the other one is.

The registry keys are obviously not working. Do the clients require a reboot before those reg keys will work?

This is a log from the CustomActions Log for the latest install attempt. Doesn't look suppressed...

2011-05-13 10:48:25 Starting competitor detection...
2011-05-13 10:48:25 Enumerating competitor uninstall keys...
2011-05-13 10:48:25 PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE environment variable is: x86
2011-05-13 10:48:25 At least one competitor product found. See the competitor dump (Sophos Anti-Virus competitor list.txt) for details

As was suspected, and after consulting with the Sophos engineers, the second check is done during the install, and not pre-install.

To fix this problem, a .cfg file was created and put into the root of the update share. In my case that was " ..\CIDs\S000" . The .cfg file was composed of the following.

[SetupOptions]
suppressCRT=1
SuppressCompetitorDetection=1
SuppressPreSavCDT=1

Once the file was in-place, I had to kind of "compile" the install so it would include the .cfg file when it installed or updated from the share. I had to run this from the command line and reference the UNC path of each share and run the command. I can't remember the exact syntax used but it invoked the ConfigureSAV.exe file on the SAVSCFXP\savxp directory.