Installation guide

Product upgrade and preserving settings
If you are installing VirusScan Enterprise on a computer with an earlier version of the product,
you can preserve settings from the earlier version. These settings are preserved during the
product upgrade:
• Configuration settings for saved tasks.
• User-specified extensions.
• Exclusion settings.
• Access protection rules.
• Detection definition (DAT) file version and scanning engine version, if either previous version
is later than the version in the installation package.
• Log file names and locations.
NOTE: Although the name and location are preserved, the log file format is changed from
ANSI to UTF8. When the format is changed, the log file is renamed to *.bak.
The registry keys containing installation file locations and product versions are not preserved.
If you do not want to preserve settings, you can deselect the option during installation or remove
the previous version of the software before installing the current version.
How access protection rules are preserved
Access protection rules are preserved using this logic:
1 The current VirusScan Enterprise rules are read from the registry.
2 Each of the local VirusScan Enterprise rules are compared against all of the VirusScan
Enterprise 8.5i default rules.
3 If no exact match is found when comparing local rules to the default rules, the rule is added
to the list of rules to preserve.
4 For port blocking rules, if the local rule differs from the default rule only in its inclusions,
the rule is placed in a separate list of rules to be merged with the equivalent VirusScan
Enterprise 8.7i rules.
5 The whitelist for each of the port rules, from Step 4, is merged with the whitelist of the
equivalent VirusScan Enterprise 8.7i rule, and a newly formed rule is written to the registry
for use by VirusScan Enterprise 8.7i.
6 The modified default rules, if any from Step 3, are converted to the new VirusScan Enterprise
rule format and written to the registry. These preserved rules are included in the
user-defined rules.
NOTE: The decision to combine the whitelists of the port blocking rules that have had only
their whitelist modified is based on the assumption that the user has specific software that
they do not want blocked by the default port blocking rule.
Pre-Installation Tasks
Product upgrade and preserving settings
7McAfee VirusScan Enterprise software version 8.7i Installation Guide