SophosAV

[techyphil]

I've searched high and low and despite there being many sophos problems, none of which relate to my problem.

We have wireless laptops and cabled desktops, sophos enterprise console has alot of errors especially relating to laptops. It says "failed to retrieve update". Now, Ive tried everything to solve this. It seems laptops have to be on for at least 20 min's to check and install the updates. In some cases 90min's.

The console reports errors even if a laptop hasnt updated in the past day. If a person opens a laptop, log's in for 5mins and shutsdown then it shows as an error.

My boss is instistant that I go around every halfterm and turn them on, wait 1-2hrs (if the battery lasts) and log off. (I've got better things to do tbh)

I've used 1 laptop to 1 AP and still it takes 20-30mins. They are DELL Latitude D520 laptops with 1GB RAM and the network status shows a few packets being transferred every few seconds asthough nothing is actually being copied.

So its not a bandwidth problem. Sophos has suggested many things like, only update 1ce a week, but as soon as the laptops on it still has to check for updates which takes soooo long.

My boss also insists that by only updating 1ce a week its worse then every day as theres more to update. But its not the size of the package its just the fact it takes aaaaaaages to slowly download and slowly install and then errors because the lesson has finished.

Please please please help, im sure we're not the only school with this problem. Is there something obvious I should be looking at?

Thanks, any help extremely appreciated.

Phil

[srochford]

Which version? We're using 6.5.5 and it works fine here; I also use it at home (on a wireless laptop) and have never noticed any problems with picking up updates.

As you say, the actual updates are very small so I can't see why it should take ages to download them.

We used to use McAfee and I never got the central updating to work so just used to run the sdat.exe file as part of the startup routine. I don't know if there's something similar you can do with Sophos.

[techyphil]

Ok, got 10 laptops out which have been off for a long period (2-3months). I turned a handful of them on and watched for 2 hours.

3-Updated
5-Logged in and was updating
2-Still logging on
5-svchost.exe @ 100%


Now I have a feeling that the svchost.exe im going to have to kill untill a true fix comes out for it. I've got a update fix but also requires WSUS 3.0.

Has anyone had any difficulty installing that over WSUS 2.0? We are also running SIMS on the same server machine Bad idea tbh but theres nothing I can do about that.

I thought about stopping updates to all student laptops and only enable updates during the holiday as we are behind atleast 2 firewalls and theres nout on the machines other then windows and some software, no work is stored on the machines. So as security goes, is it really required?

[techyphil]

Oh yeh, also I was checking the data coming in on the laptops.

~100mb via wireless per logon to update Sophos and prehaps download updates from WSUS. So using an 54mb AP / 15-30 laptops

[Geoff]

The 100% cpu fix for svchost does not require WSUS 3.0.

[markcuk]

on the subject of sophos..

they rang our school yesterday to tell us there is new version out this june that will use less memory on clients :-)

mark

[techyphil]

Wooah LESS MEMORY!

I read in several places that the update wouldnt fully work without WSUS 3.0? Umm...

[Geoff]

No it will, additionally it's already been pushed out to your WSUS for installation today. See here for more info:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936301

Also be aware that WSUS 3.0 has been pushed out as a WSUS update, so your 2.0 install will autoupgrade to 3.0 unless you stop it.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935524

[john]

Oh Lord, must get to my WSUS 2 box tomrrow and hope it survives, WSUS 3 has killed my other 2 boxes for some reason and I still cannot get them working!

[techyphil]

There isnt any harm in installing Update Service Client 3.0. Im going to install WSUS 3.0 Server hopefully if all goes to plan.

Apparently from the notes its had some major tweaks. Ive read up on alot of options aswell such as approving updates before they download from microsoft, downloading updates that only install the nessesary bits rather then the entire file which for wireless users should be better.

Version 2.0 may already do alot of this but I wasnt here when some guy came in and installed it so I have no idea how its being pushed out atm.

I just know that ideally it shouldnt be on our SIMS server and that we may as well install a fresh WSUS on a new'un.

Just dont wanna c0ckup SIMS

Thanks for your support Geoff + Others