# Sophos seems to have really slowed me down



## MellowMike

Recently, my workplace offered employees the availability of their Sophos virus/spyware protector for home use. I downloaded it and started using it this past week. (I used to use Avira ... I uninstalled Avira and installed Sophos). While Sophos seems very "industrial strength" and people say it catches almost everything, it seems to have greatly slowed my internet connection down. Is that normal for some of those "industrial strength" virus softwares? My computer at home is getting up there in age and it seems to hate when I add new programs. It's very annoying because my DSL is now moving at almost dial-up speed and I it often stalls when I click on links and I know it's related to the Sophos installation because it started right after I installed it. 

Security wise, I'm also running Zone Alarm and a Suze Orman identity theft protection spyware scanner that someone gave to me as a gift. Am I perhaps running too many protection suites and they're conflicting? Or do I just chalk up slower connection speed to a good virus software like Sophos? As a side note, it seems Zone Alarm, Suze Orman's spyware watcher, and Sophos also add a lot of time to boot up. It's frustrating because I'm over paranoid about viruses so I have all these good things, but they seem to have slowed me to a crawl, especially Sophos. Any suggestions?


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## cohen

Yes maybe your virus protection (Sophes) is checking everything going in and out for your internet, so that is why it is slow. 

But we might be able to help, it could be something else, pls do the following:

If after that you are still infected, please post a Hijackthis log. To post a Hijackthis log, please do the following:
Click *Here* to download HJTsetup.exe


    * Save HJTsetup.exe to your desktop.
    * Double click on the HJTsetup.exe icon on your desktop.
    * By default it will install to C:\Program Files\Hijack This.
    * Continue to click Next in the setup dialogue boxes until you get to the Select Additional Tasks dialogue.
    * Put a check by Create a desktop icon then click Next again.
    * Continue to follow the rest of the prompts from there.
    * At the final dialogue box click Finish and it will launch Hijack This.
    * Click on the Do a system scan and save a log file button. It will scan and then ask you to save the log.
    * Click Save to save the log file and then the log will open in notepad.
    * Click on "Edit > Select All" then click on "Edit > Copy" to copy the entire contents of the log.
    * DO NOT have Hijack This fix anything yet. Most of what it finds will be harmless or even required.


We will look at your log as soon as we see it, and give you further instructions on how to fix your computer. Most of the time it will involve downloading more programs that will either give us logs to locate the malware or delete those malware.

Once you have posted a HJT Thread DO NOT make any changes to your PC unless the advisor helping you has instructed you to do so!


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## Sophos01

Hi Mike,

Normally I'd suggest contacting Sophos directly for support , but if you have the software via your company they really should be your first point of call as if they cannot help you they can raise your questions with support on your behalf.



MellowMike said:


> it seems to have greatly slowed my internet connection down. Is that normal for some of those "industrial strength" virus softwares? My computer at home is getting up there in age and it seems to hate when I add new programs. It's very annoying because my DSL is now moving at almost dial-up speed and I it often stalls when I click on links and I know it's related to the Sophos installation because it started right after I installed it.



The two most common causes for this are :

1) You've turned on too many options for Sophos and have it scanning in paranoid mode (All files / inside archives / extensive scan) for the on access part of the scanner.

To resolve this simply revert back to the default options and see if this makes a difference to speed.

Remember AV software will scan all files as they are accessed , if you have asked the scanner to do a great deal of work it *will* slow things down , however for general use the default options are usually set to give you a ballance between speed and usability.

2) Sophos is conflicting with one of the other programs you have installed.

Again , a scanner will scan files as accessed , if you have more than one installed or have another program which is monitoring files each one will perform its action before you get to the real file.

Following Cohen's instructions will be useful just in general because it will allow you (with help) to identify what programs are starting and running each time you turn on your machine and you may find that there are things running there which you do not need or want (all of which will be using system resources).


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