Rozzer Posted January 8, 2006 Posted January 8, 2006 Now i am sure i am not the only one who has this problem. But everytime a upgrade is released the upgrade can take upto 30 minutes. Its not the installing part that takes for ever its the part when its searching for available upgrades. The only way we get around it at the mo is killing the anti virus process. Any ideas? Ross
spc-rocket Posted January 8, 2006 Posted January 8, 2006 Hi Ross, It is probably the AV scanning the remote files as they are checked. Try to exclude the files and folders from the ondemand or on access scanning. This should speed up the process. From what i have read in this forum(s) it is also a good idea to exclude scanning of remote files i.e. H:\sims if your sims is on the H drive. There is a technical article developed by Capita tech support which explains what happens when the sims.net is executed. Since that requires loggin into sims.net supportnet i downloaded it here. Let me attach it (its a PDF file). BTW, What AV are you using? Sophos users have had no end of problems with getting sims working correctly. HTH, Ashok.networkimpactofsims.pdf
indiegirl Posted January 9, 2006 Posted January 9, 2006 I can only echo the AV thing. We use Sophos and have excluded our mapped SIMs drive (usually S.. although we use a diff drive letter) from the scanning process for all groups in Sophos. Startup times went from 45mins to 45 seconds on our Student Services' 1ghz PIII. I've never been thanked so much in my life
GrumbleDook Posted January 9, 2006 Posted January 9, 2006 The caveat I would put on this is to make sure that there is still a scheduled virus scan (at least) on the server which covers the files within the SIMS share. I have heard of schools that completely turned it off to try and deal with Sophos and SIMS only to find that the templates used in the reports had become infected and were causing all sorts of problems.
Rozzer Posted January 9, 2006 Author Posted January 9, 2006 yeh sophos is killing it. Very frusting because it looks bad on us techie guys Ross
Rozzer Posted January 9, 2006 Author Posted January 9, 2006 The caveat I would put on this is to make sure that there is still a scheduled virus scan (at least) on the server which covers the files within the SIMS share. I have heard of schools that completely turned it off to try and deal with Sophos and SIMS only to find that the templates used in the reports had become infected and were causing all sorts of problems. So what process did you do to make that happen? Thanksf or the reply Ross
GrumbleDook Posted January 9, 2006 Posted January 9, 2006 The school in question (not mine ... we use Macafee ... which has it's own problems) ended up turning of the scan of network drives (a good move anyway) which happened everytime a network drive was mounted (never saw the sense in that anyway) but for whatever reason one of the Techs (not the NM, who was livid when he found out) did the same on the SIMS server .... but had also stopped the on access scan on the folders in question that were shared as \\server\sims and removed it from the scheduled scan. All it took was one machine which had crashed on which Sophos had crashed on an update to become infected and then the document server was knackered as the within SIMS was infected ... and everytime someone ran a report it would infect a few more machines because s:/ was trusted for macros ... without exception. Needless to say it has been changed now. The share still does not get a scan when loaded, but the on access scan is enabled on the folder containing the share. Everyone is happy.
ICTNUT Posted January 9, 2006 Posted January 9, 2006 We had the same issue at our place, SIMS was taking a good awful long time to upgrade. In the end we called in one of the SIMS support team from County who pointed out that the McAffee ePO AV (version 8) that we use causes no end of problems with SIMS. Seeing as both SIMS and the AV are provided to us via county and that the AV policies are controlled by county it would appear that they do not speak to each other. Anyhow we know have to stop the framework (McAffee) services and then run the upgrade at which point it flies through without an issue.
Rozzer Posted January 9, 2006 Author Posted January 9, 2006 Thank you all for your advice. If i get this sorted i am sure i will be classed as the king of the school lol. Sims drives the staff crazy Ross
DMcCoy Posted January 9, 2006 Posted January 9, 2006 I'm so glad I got rid of Sophos almost 2 years ago No problems with Symantec Antivirus (corporate - not that nasty user edition). It costs me many times more than sophos (not thats this is difficult if you get sophos for £30 ) but it has saved me so much hasstle of messing with a product I just can't get on with (one thing we didn't have was the enterprise console).
Rozzer Posted January 10, 2006 Author Posted January 10, 2006 Well i set it to not scan anything sims related. Looks like an improvement just gonna monitor it other the next few days. Ross
Snuffkins Posted January 18, 2006 Posted January 18, 2006 I've had the same problem with Sims too. It happens everytime sims is run regardless of whether there are updates or not for me. It is quite common and capitas suggestion is too have two Sims shortcuts one to Pulsar.exe and one to Simsload.exe. When an update is released staff are informed that the Simsload shortcut needs to be run. Seemed to defeat the object of not having to run round updating machines one at a time... Easiest thing i found to do is have a shared staff desktop and change the shortcut on it when there's an update to run simsload first. Seems to work so far and with the antivirus sorted out it takes about 45 seconds when there is an update and when your just running pulsar it takes a couple of seconds.
wesleyw Posted January 18, 2006 Posted January 18, 2006 Have any of you installed the new updates for January? This one is supposed to have fixed the Teachers Desktop install, finally allowing teachers to view pupils information when not connected which worked before the November release but not after lol I'm hoping this will work properly. My system here hasn't suffered sofar from long installs except on my own PC! Wes
ChrisH Posted January 18, 2006 Posted January 18, 2006 Sophos bleh dont get me started.... http://www.cantshootstraight.com/images/smilies/shaft.gifSOPHOShttp://www.cantshootstraight.com/images/smilies/rocketwhore.gif
Jake Posted January 18, 2006 Posted January 18, 2006 Is that the install from capitasolus.co.uk/jan03011888 ?? If it is, I did that update this morning, went through fairly speedily, no hitches. Although it does seem to have caused an interesting sideeffect problem with the exam officers filtering of modules in assessment manager. Capita sorted that problem out after a chat with the exam officer.
Rozzer Posted January 18, 2006 Author Posted January 18, 2006 We spoke to our lea about the shrotcut changing from simloads to pulsar. They showed their concern but i think we will be trying that. Thanks for the tip Ross
wesleyw Posted January 18, 2006 Posted January 18, 2006 @Jake Yes thats the one! Seems to be okay here but I'll wait and see what Exams make of it lol Wes
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