I am moving this here from the general Avast Free etc. forum, since I am on OS X (but I didn’t notice the separate forum for OS X before).
I am trying to install Avast, but the installer gives me a message that I can’t install due to the presence of Sophos antivirus.
I tried to remove all traces that I can find of an old Sophos install long ago uninstalled, but I still get the message.
I do not remember how I ended up with an incomplete uninstall, about 18 months ago. I probably just naively tried to uninstall Sophos by deleting the app, and then flailed around removing things when that didn’t work well.
When Avast refused to install today, I found and ran at the shell the local Sophos uninstaller utility, still installed on my machine. It didn’t complain, and ended by removing itself.
When that didn’t work, I searched around in the shell and removed a variety of remaining configuration files and log directories.
When that didn’t work, I posted here (in the general Sophos Free etc. forum), and as suggested there by Eddy (thank you!), used the generic uninstaller posted by Sophos at https://community.sophos.com/kb/en-us/121206. It ran, very quickly, and said the uninstall was successful.
However, I still receive the message when installing Avast - that Sophos antivirus was detected.
Is there any list of what the Avast installer checks to determine the presence of Sophos on OS X? I am stumped right now.
I have used the uninstall tools provided by Sophos (both the one that came with my installation, and the one linked to on the Sophos support pages indicated by Stephen Winderlich and Eddy).
But I still get the same message from the Avast installer. Unfortunately, there is something the Avast installer deteects from Sophos, which the Sophos tools do not remove for me. I have not been able to find any other traces of Sophos in the usual sorts of directories, though I am not an OS X sys admin expert, so there may be some places eluding me which I should look.
What would help the most is to see the list of places the Avast installer looks to detect Sophos. Then I could find whatever is being missed by the Sophos tools.
Using a more thorough search from the shell, I found the un-deleted Sophos files by using a comprehensive find command in console. The rogue files (not deleted by the Sophos uninstaller, but detected by the Avast installer) were here:
/private/var/db/receipts
After removing the 2 files with “Sophos” in the name from that directory, the Avast installer finally agreed that Sophos was not installed, and I am now happily running Avast.
Posting this just in case somebody hits it again.
Thanks to Eddy, Steven Winderlich, and TED123 for their suggestions.
I was using Sophos Home for my mac. However, I would like to switch to Avast Security. It gives me the error “Sophos antivirus has been detected. To install the Avast product, please uninstall the incompatible software first.”. Since I’m not a technical person, I’m not sure how to find the hidden files using the terminal. Could someone give me the commands to remove all traces of Sophos?
