Analyst's View: Antivirus Rescue CDs

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2363533,00.asp

 

OMG! The sponsorship shines through like never before... "Those with a valid Norton product key should start with the Norton CD, as it can clean up more thoroughly than the free products."

Two words: My god...

 

......

 

Sad thing is that piece of garbage Norton rescue CD has just as many FP's as its Power Eraser tool.

 

Doesn't make my quote any better. I read the whole thing, so no need to quote what's coming AFTER what I quoted.

 

You act like the forums boss here.
Taking an informative post right down with your first reply.
After the reply on that you start trying to teach the replier what to do and what to don't.
Very Nice.

 

...... isnt an informative post. You brought it down with your none sense post just to up your post count.

 

Since when do you have telepathic sources?

 

Again with the useless post. Useless posts are meant for 1 thing only to get your post count up or to get karma up. In your case post count. And while upping your post count your bringing down your own topic like I stated a post ago.

 

Having used the Avast! BART CD Myself, not only on my PC's but friends also, I can confirm 100% that ALL! of the troublesome issues were completely removed after running this CD. The AV's that had trouble removing the malware etc.. ALL reported the system clean after use of the BART CD.

I rest my case.................

 

Heres a complete scenario of what the BART CD will do


The avast! Bootable Antivirus & Recovery Tool (BART) CD is a breakthrough in the field of administration tools! In short, it is a bootable CD, giving you the capability to detect and remove virus infections on a computer. All this can be done fast and reliably, without the risk of spreading the infection any further. But the BART CD can do much more! It also contains tools for editing registry files and a tool to check and fix disk errors.

The latest version of the BART CD can be used on all Windows-supported file systems, i.e. NTFS, as well as less common storage devices, such as SCSI/RAID. In general, it will work on any disk device that supports Windows XP. It can also be used on non-standard devices, such as those used on servers, by using the standard Windows XP driver supplied by the hardware vendor.

The BART CD also supports networking. After network support is started, NETBIOS and TCP/IP protocols will be available. It is also possible to map network drives. Just enter the path to the drive (in standard UNC format \server\share) and select the letter to which the drive should be mapped. After the drive is successfully mapped, you can work with the network drive in the same way as any other (local) drive - e.g. it can be scanned by avast!

The BART CD is a tool no administrator should be without - or, for that matter, anybody who deals with the recovery of data on hard drives. The license model is specified as a multi-node license, which means when you buy one BART CD, you can administer multiple computers, provided the CD is used on only one computer at any one time, and only by a single user.
avast! Antivirus

ICSA certificate The main, and most important component of the BART CD is a special version of avast! 4 antivirus. It is based on exactly the same kernel as other avast! 4 Editions, which has been certified by ICSA Labs and ensures excellent detection capabilities combined with high performance. It detects 100% of ITW viruses/worms (In-The-Wild) and also includes advanced Trojan horse detection. avast! also takes part in Virus Bulletin tests, having received the VB100 award many times.

In the latest version, the user interface of BART avast! antivirus has been completely redesigned. A wizard has been added to the interface to guide you through all the settings. The settings allow you to turn on the scanning of archives (compressed files), and much more.

Sometimes, for instance, it may be undesirable to write to the hard disk (for example, if this would overwrite deleted files that you would like to restore somehow). Therefore, for operations requiring disk storage (e.g. unpacking archives to a temporary folder), BART avast! antivirus enables you to specify where such files should be stored.

The version of avast! antivirus, included on the BART CD, is able to repair virus infections. If avast! detects a virus it is able to repair, control is given to a special module that performs the first phase of the repair process. The user is then asked to start the operating system from the hard disk. The second phase of the repair process is performed here - the infected files, together with all references (such as registry associations), are removed. For security reasons, it is recommended to perform the third phase after another test from the BART CD.

A key feature of the BART CD is the way it handles updates (especially of the virus database). It includes a Builder that works on your Windows operating system (any version) and downloads the most recent versions of the BART CD components (Internet connection is required).

The Builder then creates an ISO image which has to be burned onto a CD (ISO images are standard input files in most modern CD burning software). Since the virus database updates are rather frequent, it is recommended to use re-writeable CDs.

In emergency cases, it is possible to use the updated virus database directly from the BART CD - by loading it from a diskette.

All programs on the BART CD work with UNICODE characters, so they are fully functional even in an environment where standard code pages are not enough (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, and also some European languages).
Registry Cleaner

The Registry Cleaner will help you find and fix problems and correct inefficiencies in on-disk Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 registry hives. It also provides ways to recover the registry following virus attacks.

The program is highly configurable and enables different registry cleaning tasks to be run.
Junk File Remover

The Junk File Remover utility will help you find and delete unnecessary files that waste space on your hard drives. It can also empty system caches, such as Temporary Internet Files and IE history.

It features very fast scanning and reliable fixing of any problems found.
avast! Disk Checker

Disk Checker is a powerful tool for searching and repairing disk errors. It is quite similar to the ScanDisk tool or chkdsk.exe, supplied with the Windows operating systems.

You can select either standard or thorough tests. The thorough test additionally performs a sector check. It is capable of finding bad sectors on your disk and marking them as such.

The program works both with hard disks (including SCSI and RAID) and removable media

 

Thanks to the OP for the worthwhile topic. It should force some folks to contemplate strategies beyond simply running resident and on-demand security programs.

I have full system Acronis back up images on hand, if my security programs can't get me out of trouble. But I haven't chosen an AV Rescue CD.

Aside from the two "paid" options noted by Ruebenking, does anyone have any recommendations from the other (free) 7 on the list?

Antivir Rescue CD (free) (Direct Download)
AVG Rescue CD (free)
BitDefender Rescue CD (free)
F-Secure Rescue CD (free)
Kaspersky Rescue Disk (free)
Panda SafeCD (free)
PC Tools Alternate Operating System Scanner (free)

 

Ive got some AVG rescue CD screenshots and info on my blog in my sig. I like it because you can run it off of a USB thumb drive. Ive got the info on my blog for that as well.

 

I keep a copy of both the Avira and F-Secure CDs nearby, but other than playing around with each I haven't had the opportunity to use them on an infected system yet. I like that they both have the ability to update their signatures prior to scanning.