Glitch in Sophos leaves PCs hanging
by Nikola Strahija on July 14th, 2005 Some enterprise users of Sophos Anti-Virus (SAV) for Windows version 5 found their machines were taking up to 15 minutes to log on to the network after applying Microsoft's Update Rollup 1 for Win 2000 SP 4.
Sophos has issued a workaround (removing C:winntsystem32mswsock.dll from on access scanning) pending the release of a more comprehensive fix.
A second "slow startup issue" can leave Windows PCs running SAV 5 hanging for up to 30 minutes because of occasional conflicts with Windows 2000, XP and 2003. Sophos has issued a temporary workaround.
Sophos's Mitchell conceded the workaround was less than ideal but argued more general criticism was unwarranted because Sophos has a good software reliability record. He said its developers were working hard to resolve the glitches. In the meantime details of suggested workarounds had been posted on the Sophos web site and emailed to 20,000 supported users.