Microsoft offline virus scan

[GeoffW1 (Geoff)]

Hi,

Most know there are various ways to scan your Windows PC. You can install resident software, or use a scanner which swoops from the Cloud, like Trend Micro Housecall, or Malwarebytes Free.

Those have an achilles heel though, you have to boot up into the operating system, although you can use Safe Mode. This makes it possible for the more fiendish of malware to pervert your efforts and hide from the scan.

This new update of an old warhorse from Microsoft makes a bootable CD or USB drive, which then scans for infections from there. It can pick up rootkits which walk right past other scanners.

I've tried it, and it is efficient if a bit slow. It picked up 4 lurking infections in my PC which had escaped all other scans. Have a read of this

http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/...-name-new-use/

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w...fender-offline

See what you think

Cheers

[Dennis]

Thanks Geoff – I’ll have a look at that later on and give it a go.

Cheers

Dennis

[Kal (Andrew)]

Downloaded. I'll give it a go later as well.

[Jules76 (Julian)]

Ah, reminds me of the good old DOS virus scanners. Back in the day when I worked in retail PC store, doing an virus scan outside of Windows using good old MS-DOS was the safest and quickest way of finding viruses, no matter where they tried to hide.

Good to see Microsoft getting back to providing something similiar as not many antivirus software developers do the same thesedays.

[Poita (Peter)]

I use the bit defender boot disc and the Kapersky boot disc to get rid of any nasties as they boot into linux and bypass the HDD boot altogether, makes it far easier to remove root kits and persistent viruses. They both will autoupdate on booting to the latest virus definitions. Well worth having on the shelf.
They have a text only mode or GUI mode and are very easy to use.

http://rescuedisk.kaspersky-labs.com...isk/updatable/

http://download.bitdefender.com/rescue_cd/