Tech Forum

For the last several months, I (the Ward Clerk) have been manually update our Sophos Anti-virus software by right-clicking the Sophos icon on the tray, and selecting the option to "Update now"

Most days, it has been taking several, sometimes dozens, of attempts to actually download the update. But eventually I get it done.

Today however, the pop-up update window is saying it "Could not contact server" and nothing happened. Again, after several attempts, this is still happening.

Thoughts or advice?

landbeck wrote:Thoughts or advice?

I'd wait. The servers it's going to are the church's servers. They may be down or overloaded. If down, it may not be fixed until the IT folks go back to work on Monday, Utah time.

No joy. Unless the servers have remained down all week, or are overloading this morning at 3am Mountain-time, that is not the problem. Still no joy, message is still "Could not contact server"

So we are going to just operate with a failing anti-virus program until the computer decides to simply not work, or we have a user who infects us by lack of care.

I can confirm that I'm also seeing the same "Could not contact server" message. To me this looking morelike a genuine server issue, rather than a problem with an individual computer. If the issue isn't server related, it might be prudent to contact the GSC to confirm this. Then follow their guidance.

FWIW - I had a similar problem with another Clerk computer in our Stake earlier this year. This was eventually resolved with the help of the GSC Tier 2 support team. They will then guide you through the steps to resolve the issue. This wasn't server related.

My ward's admin computer has shown that same message for years, as long as I can remember. I tried to call the GSC on a Wednesday night last year. They talked me through a full uninstall and reinstall, and the problem remained. Finally, the GSC guy told me to ignore it, and just use an out-of-date Sophos. He was not concerned about it.

See
https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... os#p173522

drepouille wrote:My ward's admin computer has shown that same message for years, as long as I can remember. I tried to call the GSC on a Wednesday night last year. They talked me through a full uninstall and reinstall, and the problem remained. Finally, the GSC guy told me to ignore it, and just use an out-of-date Sophos. He was not concerned about it.

See
https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... os#p173522

I would suggest you go back to them and get the 2nd Tier Support involved. They gave me a whole load of different options to try! I won’t post them here as it might not be something they would want posted publicly.

Dogged determination seems to have won this fight. This morning, clicking the "Update now" option worked. It connected, downloaded an update, and is happy.

No more reminding red exclamation points in the lower right-hand side of the screen. So far!

The exact same thing is happening again, lo these 11 months later.

I've been getting the error for two weeks in a row now.

Due to the following;
1) the complete lack of official response (or even notice of what on earth was occurring) the LAST time this happened, and
2) the fact that it has happened so many times to so many people (given the breadth of other similar items exactly like this one that I am seeing here), and
3) the fact that it is happening again, and that we (again) have received zero notice of a cause or an event that might be the root of the issue,
can I presume, with a great deal of grumpy user-frustration, that the lack of leadership or guidance on this stems from the obvious circumstance that there is actually not a great deal of importance to the Sophos software, and I can just attempt to uninstall it to rid myself of the nagging reminder that it has failed to update?

I grasp the complexity of operating a system on the scope of the worldwide church network, and applaud the amazing advances in capacity and throughput we have all witnessed, but since we are gradually shifting to an environment where we will be using the church computer as little as possible, is the failure to keep this running, and the failure to alert us (the end-users) because these church computers are on the cusp of being eliminated?

landbeck wrote:can I presume, ...I can just attempt to uninstall it to rid myself of the nagging reminder that it has failed to update?

No.

If you're a ward clerk, contact the Assistant Stake Clerk - Technology Specialist (STS). If there is none, then it falls to the stake clerk. If he can't fix it, he needs to contact support (or may direct you to contact support).

This forum is primarily a user-to-user help and not an official line of support. Unless others have experienced the same thing and fixed it, the forum may not have an answer.