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Sophos Anti-Virus for Windows 95/98/Me: upgrading Windows 95/98/Me workstations to the current version automatically

If you are upgrading from Sophos Anti-Virus Small Business Edition on Windows 98/Me, or running Sophos Anti-Virus Windows 95/98/Me version 4.2 or below on your Windows 95/98/Me computers, you must remove the old version of Sophos Anti-Virus before installing Sophos Anti-Virus Windows 95/98/Me, current version.

You can either remove it manually from individual computers or, in a Windows domain or NetWare network, you can run a login script to remove it at the same time as you install Sophos Anti-Virus Windows 95/98/Me current version.

This article describes how to uninstall the old version, install the new version, and remove all obsolete lines in your login script. Note that the script described here will install the current version of Sophos Anti-Virus before removing the old version.

Work through the instructions below in order.

What to do

If SAVAdmin and SAVAgent are installed on your network, you can use them to monitor the upgrade process. Open both, and toggle between them as the update process takes place. You can also export a list of your computers for reference before you upgrade. For details, see section 27 (Backing up SAVAdmin Network View groups) of the SAVAdmin user manual.

The notes below assume an installation on a Windows server using the default folders and paths. Use your equivalent paths if you do not use the defaults, and add, or edit, the equivalent lines to those described below in a NetWare or UNIX server login script.

Installing the console

Install the management server and Enterprise Console as described in the initial sections of the startup guide.

Editing the login script

  1. In Enterprise Console, select the group containing your Windows 95/98/Me computers and click 'Updating policy'. Select 'Windows 95/98/Me' and click 'Configure'. Make a note of the 'Address' shown. This is the path to your Central Installation Directory (CID), e.g. \\myserver\InterChk\ES9x.
  2. If you have any Windows 95 computers, a small utility must be run on them before installation. Download a copy of the file w95ws2setup.exe from the Microsoft website, and copy it to the root of the Sophos share on your server (e.g. C:\Program files\Sophos SWEEP for NT).
  3. On the Windows domain controller, use Notepad to open the login script file C:\Winnt\SYSvol\sysvol\[domain].com\scripts\login.bat, where [domain] is the name of the domain to which the Windows 95/98/Me workstations log in.
  4. If you have any Windows 95 computers, add this line to the login script
    \\myserver\InterChk\w95ws2setup.exe
    replacing 'myserver' with the name of the server on which you installed Enterprise Console.
  5. Add the following line to the login script (where appropriate, under the line mentioning w95ws2setup.exe). This will install Sophos Anti-Virus, current version:
    <Path>\setup.exe -user <domain\name> -pwd <password> -login -s
    where <Path> is the location of the new CID (e.g. \\myserver\InterChk\ES9x), and the username and password are for an account that is able to log on to your Windows 95/98/Me computers, and has read access to the CID share (in this example \\myserver\InterChk).
  6. Add the following line to the login script. This will remove the old version from your computers:
    if exist "C:\Progra~1\Sophos~1\sweep95.cfg" \\myserver\InterChk\W95Inst\setup.exe -remove
  7. If the login script contains a line similar to the following, remove this line
    \\myserver\InterChk\W95Inst\setup.exe -inl -a
  8. If the login script contains a line similar to the following, change the -poll number to 2000000
    start /wait \\myserver\InterChk\Savagent.exe -update -poll=3600
  9. Save the edited login script.

The next time your users log in, their computers will run these commands. You can either email your users and tell them to reboot, thus initiating the update process, or wait until they next log on.

The upgrade process

During the upgrade process, you should monitor progress in both Enterprise Console and SAVAdmin.

When the user next logs on, the following will happen:

The Sophos Anti-Virus current version installer can install Sophos AutoUpdate while the old version is still on the computer, but cannot install the current version until the old version has been removed. If the user reboots their computer when requested, Sophos Anti-Virus current version will be installed during the reboot. Otherwise, once Sophos AutoUpdate has been installed, it will check every five minutes to see if it can install the new version and will install the current version once the old version is no longer present. On any individual computer this process should not take more than ten minutes.

As SAVAgent will still be present on the computers, SAVAdmin will be able to monitor the status of the old version of Sophos Anti-Virus. SAVAdmin cannot monitor the status of Sophos Anti-Virus current version. In SAVAdmin, periodically press the F5 key to refresh the SAVAdmin view. Check the following during the update process:

In Enterprise Console, before the installation of Sophos Anti-Virus current version, your Windows 95/98/Me computers will either be greyed out, or will not be visible. When Sophos Anti-Virus current version is installed:

If, for any individual computer, the SAVAdmin column 'SAV Installed' contains the text 'No', and the Enterprise Console 'On-access' column does not read 'Active' for any significant period of time (more than 10 minutes), you should check the status of that computer as a priority.

Checking the upgrade

The computers should upgrade automatically when their users reboot.

After the upgrade

Once all computers have upgraded to Sophos Anti-Virus current version, do as follows

  1. On the Windows domain controller, use Notepad to open the login script file (see above).
  2. Delete the line that removes the old version of Sophos Anti-Virus from your computers
    if exist "C:\Progra~1\Sophos~1\sweep95.cfg" \\myserver\InterChk\W95Inst\setup.exe -remove
  3. If the login script contains a line similar to the following, delete this line
    start /wait \\myserver\InterChk\Savagent.exe -update -poll=2000000
  4. Add the following line to the login script to uninstall SAVAgent on your Windows 95/98/Me computers
    Savagent.exe -uninstall

Leave the other lines that you added to the login script alone. They will install Sophos Anti-Virus on any Windows 95/98/Me computers that you add to your network.

If you need more information or guidance, then please contact technical support.