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Intermittent freezing on Windows 7

TrevorPrinn

I'm having an intermittent problem with Sophos 9.0.0. Once or twice a week my PC locks up for a minute or two, and explorer hangs temporarily. Apps work for a while provided I can get to them, which can be difficult without explorer. I usually notice the problem when I try to start Winzip and it doesn't appear. When that happens Winzip won't ever manage to start itself up until after a reboot.

Every time this has happened the tooltip on the Sophos system tray icon has said that it is updating, and continues to say that no matter how long I leave it. If I try to initiate an update from there, the dialogue appears and stays indefinitely, and if I press cancel the dialogue goes, but nothing else changes. If I try to open the control app the splash screen appears, sits on top of everything and I can't get rid of it. The app itself never opens. I also can't shut down the "Sophos Anti-Virus" service. The only way to get it all working again is to reboot. After that it updates itself OK and everything works.

Most of the time, there's no problem at all with it. I suspect it might be trying to start an update immediately after booting and it's occasionally tripping over something else that's happening, but I can't think how to find out what, because it rarely goes wrong.

The machine is running Windows 7 Ultimate, fully patched.

:1043


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    Dear Trevor,

    Do you have "MRxSmb - The Redirector Failed to Determine the Connection Type" warnings in Windows Log?

    Microsoft states that this is not something you should be concerned about but in same cases it leads to total lockup for 30 seconds up to two minutes.

    Solution for it is to disable auto detect for network adapter and set it to fixed value (100Mbit half-duplex for example).

    Kind Regards

    Igor

    :1090
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    I can't find anything like that in the logs, but I've made the change to the network adapter anyway, and I'll see if that sorts it out.

    :1092
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    Sorry, but that hasn't fixed it. It's happened again since.

    It's also not to do with startup. I've now seen it happen after Sophos has managed to run an update. Otherwise the symptoms are the same - after the freeze clears the only app that appears to have gone wrong is Sophos update.

    :1101
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    We have this issue as well.  Whether the client machine updates to Sophos or the EC, whenever it updates the system hangs and no apps are usable into the update ends.  It happens on Windows XP and Windows 7 machines, all of which are in our domain.  The hang last between 2 and 15 minutes.

    :1189
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    I'm having the same experiance accross a number of machines end point version 9.0.5.

    I have a case a few days old - [#2332248] with Sophos but no solution answers yet.

    To me its as if either end point application or data scanning locks the IE thread whist the scan is called then sometimes fails to release it either quickely or sometimes at all. that whole IE tab set can be affected, though some times other IE sessions will continue. the only way out of this is a hard kill of the IE process not responding which often takes down all IE windows - very unusefull.

    I've uninstalled Sophos and all is fine, then reinstalled Sophos and the problem reoccurs.

    I'm on default profiles for the enpoints and have also tried IE in safe no addon mode - all to no avail.

    Unfortuantly i'm removing Sophos from badly affected machines and using a 3rd party AV untill i can find a fix.

    :3224
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    Don't know if this is related but, when the endpoint has a monitor only policy applied, when starting outlook it misreports a file transfer request

    A data control policy was infringed on machine MACHINE_NAME by logged on user COMPANY\stuart.fawcett.

     An "allow file transfer" action was taken.

          Username: COMPANY\stuart.fawcett

          Rule names: 'Spreadsheet Challenge Check'

          User action: File open

          Application Name: Outlook

          Data Control action: Allow

          File type: Spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel-OPC)

          Source path: C:\DOCUME~1\STUART~1.FAW\MYDOCU~1\ADSL~1.XLS

    The Rule is

       For any file

      where the file type is

      Spreadsheet,

      and where the destination is

      Floppy Drive

      or Optical Drive

      or Removable Storage

      or Outlook

      or Internet Explorer 7

      or Internet Explorer 8,

      Allow file transfer.

    I'm assuming this is a different issue at the moment. I cannot see anything actually being sent out automatically.

    :3225
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    Just to be sure i again uninstalled SAV (no reboot or anything) and spent the last 2 hours opening Windows and tabs within tabs with no issues occuring.

    Did all the usual things about opening tabs quickely etc but no lockups or freezes etc - IE was nce and fast. I'm now reinstallng SAV and so expecting the issues to return once i do a reboot.

    :3229
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    we just started rolling out Sophos here and have had similar issues.  Was able to determine in most cases that it was the Sophos firewall.  It was like the policy even though it was set was not applying to some machines completely and causing lockups in IE, outlook, and SQL management studio.  We removed the firewall and it resolved the issue in all but 1 computer.  Which IE still locks up randomly.  Just curious if any of you were using the firewall with a policy configured for it.

    :5328
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    We are having the same issue here. We are starting to roll out Windows7 machiens and it only affects those machines. Even at that, it's not all the machines. Our firewall is disabled.

    We have one user testing this possible solution out for us:

    Delete this key: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\AppInit_DLLs
    Change the value of this key from 1 to 0: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\LoadAppInit_DLLs

    It's been a week and she hasn't complained about IE freezing up on her. She was one of the main ones where it would freeze daily.

    We are just wondering what the repercussions are of doing this action. Anyone know?

    :5354
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    We've had to do the same in our enviroment.

    I've removed the Sophos DLL from the AppInit as well as set the AppIni back to 0. This turns off the BOPS DLL (all application data is still routed through this DLL even if the feature is off).

    In addition, I've upgraded our clients to the latest version of Sophos 9.5 and added the following registry key:

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Sophos\SAVService\SetupOptions]
    "DetourDLLState"="excluded"

    This prevents the Sophos DLL from being readded to the AppInit line during a program update.

    The BOPS feature is just a complete nightmare that will cause you many headaches. Turning off the feature has cured most of our freezing issues.

    :5424