new life into the market for anti-virus software. Here the author tests Sophos' SWEEP which Sophos has not had certified by the NCSA. Sophos is unique among anti-virus vendors in publicly exhibiting a lack of confidence in the NCSA's methodology. The tester was surprised to note that the basic user documentation was the SWEEP for Windows NT manual from the previous release, with most OS references to the Windows NT 3.51 user interface instead of NT 4.0. The manual was supplemented by a small booklet that ostensibly covered the changes to the SWEEP client software, known as InterCheck. The InterCheck for NT booklet was the only accurate depiction of the installation screens in all the documentation, so with its help, the program was set up on a Windows NT 4.0 server. Getting the software set up on a workstation was more difficult because the documentation didn't provide clear directions on deploying the software. Further problems occurred when the SWEEP Service refused to start until the tester entered the login account specifics in the Services control panel. Configuring SWEEP can also be a trial. In places where you are expected to specify a file, there's not always a Browse option to allow you to select a directory path.The product did a good job of scanning raw virus samples, but of major concern was the fact that it could not scan zipped files.This is a huge gap in the product as so many of the files distributed on the Internet are in a compressed format. To conclude, the product was not found to be a good choice of antivirus protection for many organizations. The lack of management tools and consistent documentation makes it troublesome for managers to initially deploy and, later, to see what actions are taking place. Possibly the worst flaw is the product's inability to scan files compressed using ZIP or similar formats. LANTimes,