Cisco AMP Antivirus and PFE

[pvburger]

Just wanted to let folks know that Cisco AMP for Endpoints may interfere with the proper functioning of Probe for EPMA. This is a virus scanner/network threat detection tool recently pushed by our organization. The symptom, when running PFE (on Windows 10 in our case), is a popup box titled "PositionGetSampleData" with a message reading "Could not lock file." Any PFE process running at the time the error is thrown is halted. A temporary workaround is to disable the Cisco AMP program.

To disable the program, you'll first want to disconnect from the network which provides your internet access. This is because shutting off your antivirus software will leave your machine vulnerable to viruses, malware, network attacks, etc. Next, to stop the Cisco AMP program on a Windows 10 machine, click on the Processes tab in Task Manager. Find Cisco AMP Tray Client, and click End Task. Also, find Cisco AMP for Endpoints Connector and do the same. This should take care of it. Remember to re-enable Cisco AMP once you're finished using PFE!

As I suggested, this is a temporary workaround, as you may want your machine to have internet access on a regular basis. Another possible workaround is to add exclusions to Cisco AMP for PFE. When I have time, I may experiment with this to see whether Cisco AMP and PFE can be made to peacefully coexist.

Cheers!

Paul Burger

[Probeman]

Hi Paul,
It would be interesting to learn more about this. Please keep us informed on your investigations!   

At the Univ. of Oregon the university provides us with McAfee anti-virus. We have this running on all the computers in our lab, mostly Windows 7 and 10, including the Probe for EPMA/Thermo computer and the PeakSight computer, with no issues. So  far at least!

Our FEI Quanta runs on a computer which off the campus network, because the FEI software can't be updated and must be run on Windows 2000!  Apparently we have to buy a new instrument to get updated software!   

What experiences have others had with other anti-virus software packages?

john

[Mike Matthews]

We had an issue several years ago with an Oxford Instruments Inca dll being mistakenly picked up as a virus threat. Fortunately it didn’t stop the software working (although our IT security team did throw a hissy fit, demanding to know how we’d introduced a virus even though we’d told them about the known issue). I think we contacted the anti-virus vendor with the conflict and it was resolved with the next update.