av rescue disks

[iceni60]

hi i was just at another forum reading about someone who's PC wouldn't boot. they had AVG installed and were told to make an AVG rescue disk on their other PC, then boot from the floppy and perform a scan.

i have F-Secure installed, can i make a rescue disk using my F-secure? if not is there an av rescue disk i can download and keep on a floppy incase i ever need it? thanks.

[Ned Slider]

If you're using WinNT/2K/XP, then probably no. These OSes use the NTFS file system that can't be read by DOS so booting from a normal boot floppy or CD won't work as these can't read/write an NTFS file system.

For a bootable rescue CD, check out Bart's BartPE using something like the McAfee command line scanner.

Also, if a PC is so badly infected that it won't boot, then often the simplist solution is to pop the HD into another machine to scan and clean it. Failing that, a reformat and reinstall is probably in order.

Ned

[iceni60]

thanks, Ned Slider http://www.wilderssecurity.com/images/icons/icon14.gif i had a feeling it wouldn't happen. i don't have a CD burner ATM, but i'll get one soon. i want an ipod and a DVD rewriter ;D

really, if my PC was in that bad a state i would reformat. i just thought it might be useful to be able to get back in incase i needed to make any notes of things i'd need after the fresh install. thanks for your help :)

**EDIT** i have XP

[Ned Slider]

No problem.

I did find one company selling bootable recovery CDs if you want a commercial solution:

http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_bart_cd.html

It's a bit pricey though starting at $299 for a 1 year licence :o

Ned

[Eliot]

You would need to update it with current definitions, so it would be an update the floppy every week or so, job.

Hope that helps,

Eliot