Remove third-party security software

If you want to remove any previously installed security software, do the following BEFORE selecting the Third-Party Security Software Detection in the Protect Computers Wizard and installing it:

  • If computers are running another vendor's anti-virus software, ensure that its user interface is closed.
  • If computers are running another vendor's firewall or HIPS product, ensure that it is turned off or configured to allow the Sophos installer to run.
  • If you want to remove not just the other vendor's software but also the other vendor's update tool (to prevent it from reinstalling the software automatically), follow the steps below. If computers have no update tool installed, you can disregard the steps below.
Note You have to locally restart any computers from which you remove third-party anti-virus software.
Note HitmanPro.Alert may already be installed either as a standalone product or from Sophos Central. You should remove HitmanPro.Alert before applying on-premise management from Sophos Enterprise Console.

If computers have another vendor's update tool installed and you wish to remove the update tool, you will need to modify the configuration file before selecting the Third-Party Security Software Detection option in the Protect Computers Wizard.

Note If computers are running another vendor's firewall or HIPS product, you may need to leave that vendor's update tool intact. See that vendor's documentation for clarification.

To modify the configuration file:

  1. From the Central Installation Directory, find the data.zip file.
  2. Extract the crt.cfgconfiguration file from data.zip.
  3. Edit the crt.cfg file to change the line reading "RemoveUpdateTools=0" to "RemoveUpdateTools=1".
  4. Save your changes and save crt.cfg to the same directory that contains data.zip. Do not put crt.cfg back into data.zip or it will be overwritten the next time the data.zip file is updated.

When you run the Protect Computers Wizard and select Third-Party Security Software Detection, the modified configuration file will now remove any third-party security update tools as well as third-party security software.