Running a Virus-Scanner from a Bootable CD/Flash-Drive?

bigsilly

Newcomer
Hi!

I've another computer that's been overloaded with viri, on a Win XP system, to the point that trying to login with the administrator account results in an immediate freeze, and logging in through the user account results in a system plagued by pop-ups, webpage rerouting, and a refusal by any anti-virus suite to delete or heal the major .exe-based sources.

I was hoping to boot-up off of a Flash drive or a CD, run a virus-scanner from it to cleanse the virus from my main system, and then either resume usage of my main system or, to be extra safe, just copy over what I want to keep onto a Flash drive or external hard-disk (after the files have been scanned in the previous step, of course), and then I'd format the infected disks and start anew on them.

The trouble is, while I can find lots of bootable CD's, or bootable Linux distros that can easily fit onto a Flash drive, the trouble is that I haven't any idea how I'd run a virus scanner off of them. Could Linux-based virus scanners detect Windows-based viri? I just don't know.

Have you any ideas what I might do, apart from a lose-everything format where I copy over nothing beforehand?

Thank you. :)
 
You could try Cureit; a free, standalone single executable, complete scan antivirus app. I've used it for such 'salvage operations' previously.
 
Go to Kaspersky.com. Download their free trial to a clean machine and install. Then download and install PE Builder. Make a rescue disc from inside Kaspersky (you will need a Windows boot CD for the image). It's pretty painless to do once you have installed the main three things above, and then you can take the CD and boot your infected machine from the CD, and scan the hard drives without having to run from the infected discs.

Note that this may not fix your infected machine. If the virus has done enough damage, you won't have a working/booting machine once you've wiped out all the virus problems.
 
Hiren's.

Google. Download. Burn CD. Run FProt or Mcafee offline virus scan. If you still have problems, time for the old nuke and pave.
 
Hi!

I used Hiren's, and no luck. It found a few viri, but the main problems still persist.

Will I be in any danger of infecting a new system install if I remove the infected HDD's, install Windows to a new HDD, then scan and recover off of the infected HDD's by enclosure interface? So long as I scan them before I access any files on them, it'll be okay, right?

Thanks! :)
 
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