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Computing  Anti-Virus Provision

For Windows PCs, Physiology provides a Sophos Anti-Virus installer program, and we run an update server to give you any available updates automatically every ten minutes without any disturbance to your work.

How to install

From within the department, you must be logged in as an administrator and have drive N: available (run the "Connect to Physiology Network" program on the desktop if not). Then run n:\Installchooser.exe and choose Sophos. An initial installer will run, which will then complete in the background for a number of minutes. When complete, a blue shield will be shown in the Windows system tray at bottom right of your screen. If the Shield is grey then updating has not yet completed. If the Shield has a red cross on it then updating has failed.

If you want to install on a departmentally owned and run computer located outside the department (such as a laptop) then updates will only occur when the system is connected inside the department (this does not include wireless).

If you want to install on a personal laptop or a computer which is normally outside the department, you are advised to get the personal edition which you can download from the self-registration page at https://register.oucs.ox.ac.uk/self/software. This is preconfigured to update from Sophos but the credentials used for this will change every summer. If you download it yourself, you will be prompted by email to reinstall when the credentials lapse.

Updates

The Physiology Sophos update server (sus.physiol) is updated directly from the Sophos website. Virus definitions are checked for every ten minutes and a check for any new version of the program is done every hour.
Updates are distributed to \\willis\sophoscidwritable\CIDs\S000\

When installed using the provided installer, updates to both the program and the virus definitions occur automatically and silently, and are checked for every ten minutes.
Updates are taken from the primary network path \\willis\sophoscid\ in the directory \CIDs\S000\
Updates may also be taken from the secondary source http:\\www.physiol.ox.ac.uk\SophosCID\

You can check whether updates have indeed occurred by 1. Hovering the mouse over the Blue Shield in the system tray, which will give you the time of the last update, 2. Check that .ide files in C:\Program Files\Sophos\Sophos Anti-Virus\ are recent (today or yesterday).