Bitdefender for DOS - using it as a backup scanner

As Blackcat has recently started a review series (it is a series, right? ) about lesser known AV solutions, I just want to add one part to this.

Bitdefender is one of the lesser known AV solutions, but nevertheless has received some attention at this forum. Somebody mentioned some time ago that they provide a free version of their latest v7 release. That is true; however it installs a few always running components (communications server etc.) despite the fact that it is an on-demand scanner only.

Bitdefender offers a free v7 scanner for DOS/Windows console, too. I have been using it for quite some time now and find it to be a very useful backup solution. So I decided to post a few general ideas of how to use it; feel free to add yours .

 

First of all a quick overview of the install process:

Download the package from the Bitdefender ftp-server at [ftp=ftp://ftp.bitdefender.com/pub/products/BitDefender Antivirus -Free Edition for MS DOS/bdcdos.zip]ftp://ftp.bitdefender.com/pub/products/BitDefender Antivirus -Free Edition for MS DOS/bdcdos.zip[/ftp]

Unzip the package with all subdirectories to the folder of your choice; e.g. c:\bddos.

This will give you a valid, but not very comfortable install. I prefer to add bitdefender to the right-click context menu for file, directories and drives with the standard settings; thus I won't have to invoke it "by hand" every time.

Here is the appropriate registry file; copy and paste the following to a text file named "bddos.reg" and doubleclick it to import the settings to your registry. Please note that you have to edit the path info to match the directory path where you have extracted the downloaded package.

-----cut below-----

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Bitdefender]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Bitdefender\command]
@="C:\\bddos\\bddosc.exe \"%1\" /all /arc /mail"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Bitdefender]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Bitdefender\command]
@="C:\\bddos\\bddosc.exe \"%1\" /all /arc /mail"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\Bitdefender]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\Bitdefender\command]
@="C:\\bddos\\bddosc.exe %1 /all /arc /mail /log=c:\\windows\\desktop\\bdreport.txt"

----end-----

The settings are:
/all - scanning all files
/arc - scan archives
/mail - scan mail databases
/log - write a scan report to file

You may wish to add /list to the * and Directory entries; this will make BD show which files it is actually scanning during the scanning process; it slows down scanning a bit though, so I removed it from my settings. In case of a full drive scan, you will be given a report file named "bdreport.txt" on your desktop.

 

This leaves us with one more task to do: Updating.
One word about this: A main advantage of the Bitdefender solution in comparison to other dos based ones (e.g. F-Prot) is, that virussig updates are rather small; the bases are split into many smaller components, and thus - although not being a true incremental update - updates are smaller than downloading the whole base completely: If they change the mime unpacking engine, you have to download the mime.xmd, which is just about 8k in size. A great advantage if you are on a slow dialup line.

The free GUI version has an updater; the dos version does not. However there is a rather good workaround for this:
Download the free GNU wget package and unzip the wget.exe into the plugins subdirectory.
(Wget is available from ftp://sunsite.dk/projects/wget/windows/wget-1.8.1b.zip). Now invoke wget with the following command line: wget.exe -N ftp://ftp.bitdefender.com/pub/updates/bitdefender_v7/plugins/*
You may have to add --passive-ftp after the -N option to download behind a firewall; a good idea is to delete all files in the plugins dir the first time to get a clean download of the bases; any update afterwards will download only changed or newer files, thus limiting download time and size.

If you have a quick line, you can download the full update packages from the Bitdefender homepage instead.

 

Finally, let's sum up the advantages:

*it's free
*does not install anything to your registry or any system directories
*good archive and unpacking support
*small and frequent (almost daily) updates

and the bad:

*dos, no fancy GUI
*quite some setup work

One last note: Bitdefender (both GUI and DOS versions) had/has(?) some problems with Symantec drivers present on a system; had quite a lot of troubles finding this incompatability. If you need help with this, send me a pm.

Hope you find this info useful.

Regards,

Karl

P.S. a screenshot of bddosc in action...

 

No karma cookie, but BIG thanks for your great guide Karl_Menshy !

 

Thank you, fin_jore .