Bootable antivirus on CD

[tallyman]

With older AV programs, such as Norton and Dr Solomon you used to b
able to create a bootable rescue disk with up-to-date definitions on s
that scans could be done on boot-up on any PC, but all current softwar
seems to assume you're going to install the AV prog to stay ther
permanently - I assume it's profit motivated to ensure everyone has
full copy of their software on every PC. As I want to be able to chec
client's PCs which may have their own AV software already installed
though probably not up to date, does anyone know of AV software whic
can be run from a bootable CD and updated as necessary. At the momen
I occasionally have to resort to installing the client's drive in on
of our PCs and virus checking it as an extra drive.

Regards

Joh


-
tallyma

 

[Chiron Paixos]

Hi John,
maybe avast! B.A.R.T. is a tool you might consider purchasing. (Yeah,
it's commercial, too.) I've used it during the evaluation period
several times with good results. Okay, it's not dirt-cheap and perhaps
oversized/-priced for a single-PC SOHO user. But for a professional
dealing with many PCs it seems to be quite nice.

Quote: "avast! Bootable Antivirus & Recovery Tools CD (BART CD) is a
breakthrough in the field of administration tools! In short it is a
bootable CD, giving you the capability to detect/clean virus
infections on a computer. All this can be done fast and reliably,
without the risk of spreading the infection any further. But BART CD
can do much more! It also contains tools for editing the registry
files (i.e. the files holding Windows Registry for the operating
system) and a tool to check and fix disk errors."
(http://www.avast.com/i_idt_154.html)

HTH,
Chiron

 

[kurt wismer]

With older AV programs, such as Norton and Dr Solomon you used to be
able to create a bootable rescue disk with up-to-date definitions on so
that scans could be done on boot-up on any PC, but all current software
seems to assume you're going to install the AV prog to stay there
permanently - I assume it's profit motivated to ensure everyone has a
full copy of their software on every PC.

actually it probably has more to do with the difficulty in coming up
with a good method for booting from clean media and retaining the
ability to access ntfs file systems... it wasn't a big issue when ntfs
wasn't widespread but now it is and it poses a serious problem for
which there still is no perfect solution...

 

[Conny]

actually it probably has more to do with the difficulty in coming up
with a good method for booting from clean media and retaining the
ability to access ntfs file systems... it wasn't a big issue when ntfs
wasn't widespread but now it is and it poses a serious problem for
which there still is no perfect solution...

--
"we're the first ones to starve, we're the first ones to die
the first ones in line for that pie in the sky
and we're always the last when the cream is shared out
for the worker is working when the fat cat's about"

PE-Builder is the boot cd you all looking for, free and uses XP or Win 2003
Server cd for files.

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder

 

[kurt wismer]

PE-Builder is the boot cd you all looking for, free and uses XP or Win 2003
Server cd for files.

which is why av companies can't use it as a solution to the ntfs
problem... they can neither rely on the user already having such a cd,
nor distribute the content themselves because of copyright...

and while i'll agree that pe builder is promising, it's of limited
utility as you'd need a cd burner and there are plenty of people who
don't have one...

 

[Conny]

which is why av companies can't use it as a solution to the ntfs
problem... they can neither rely on the user already having such a cd,
nor distribute the content themselves because of copyright...

and while i'll agree that pe builder is promising, it's of limited
utility as you'd need a cd burner and there are plenty of people who
don't have one...

--

Maybe someone in their country have a cd writer....

 

[FromTheRafters]

which is why av companies can't use it as a solution to the ntfs
problem... they can neither rely on the user already having such a cd,
nor distribute the content themselves because of copyright...

and while i'll agree that pe builder is promising, it's of limited
utility as you'd need a cd burner and there are plenty of people who
don't have one...

Have you any information on the effectiveness of Avast!'s B.A.R.T.?
Chiron Paixos' post has a link - and it purports to work on NTFS
filesystems.

Has anyone here had any real experience with this? It sure
sounds like a good package.

 

[Conny]

Have you any information on the effectiveness of Avast!'s B.A.R.T.?
Chiron Paixos' post has a link - and it purports to work on NTFS
filesystems.

Has anyone here had any real experience with this? It sure
sounds like a good package.

I was Googling around and found several DOS NTFS reader / mounter programs,
there's also a Linux boot floppy including virus-scanner that mounts NTFS
filesystems.

Google

 

[FromTheRafters]

I was Googling around and found several DOS NTFS reader / mounter programs,
there's also a Linux boot floppy including virus-scanner that mounts NTFS
filesystems.

Thanks, but I was led to believe that these weren't fully trusted
(and not generally recommended) to write to NTFS due to their
not being fully compatible with all flavors of NTFS in existence.
The preinstallation environment builder constructs the correct
environment because it uses parts from that environment when
being constructed. This attempt from Avast! purports to work
for NTFS and doesn't seem to require that the user "build" a
CD from a freshly installed environment.

 

[kurt wismer]

Have you any information on the effectiveness of Avast!'s B.A.R.T.?

not really, no... i haven't even gotten around to trying to do the
tests with pe builder that i've wanted to do...

Chiron Paixos' post has a link - and it purports to work on NTFS
filesystems.

perhaps, but you're pretty much limited to using avast with that i think...

Has anyone here had any real experience with this? It sure
sounds like a good package.

well if it is perhaps other av developers will quickly jump on the
bandwagon...

 

[kurt wismer]

Conny wrote:
[snip]

I was Googling around and found several DOS NTFS reader / mounter programs,
there's also a Linux boot floppy including virus-scanner that mounts NTFS
filesystems.

yeah, unfortunately until you actually test them out with a bunch of
scanners to see if they'll work for this purpose it doesn't actually
mean much... there are such utilities out there that you would think
would work but for whatever reason don't seem to cooperate very well
with av products (extended memory is one of the gotcha's i've heard
with regards to some of these)...