Live CD with good anti-virus software to scan/repair Windows?

I browsed through the archives, and it seems like there's no live CD from which to run a good, up-to-date anti-virus application, at least to check whether a Windows host has been compromised

The Ultimate Boot CD has only three AV applications, and their virus definition is from... 2007
In a report, ClamAV scored very low. It's nice that it's open-source, but if it's not as good as commercial alternatives...

Those of you into this kind of thing, do you confirm that there's just no good live CD to inspect Windows hosts, and possibly repair them? If there is, what do you recommend?

Thank you.

OverTheRainbow

Posted 2010-04-13T08:22:21.547

Reputation: 5 153

possible duplicate of http://superuser.com/questions/88924/anti-virus-live-cd

– DaveParillo – 2010-04-13T15:28:38.490

Sorry about the duplicate. Someone in the above article says that Linux doesn't offer a reliable-enough write access to NTFS, though. Thanks for the link. – OverTheRainbow – 2010-04-15T06:48:08.863

Answers

I am not sure about any live cd distribution . But You can use Avast! linux edition with Ubuntu to remove antivirus on you windows box. There is an excellent article on HowTogeek about the same.

ukanth

Posted 2010-04-13T08:22:21.547

Reputation: 9 930

Your best bet is probably UBCD4Win.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Boot-Manager-Disk/UBCD4WIN.shtml

It has a variety of AV tools and the definitions can be updated. For information on how to do this, see here:

http://ubcd4win.com/forum/index.php?act=idx

A new beta version is out:

Want to beta test UBCD4Win 3.60?

You could also try one of the recovery CD's from someone like Dr Web:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/Dr-Web-LiveCD.shtml

or Kaspersky:

Kaspersky Rescue Disk – Load Kaspersky AntiVirus 2009 Using DOS

Pulse

Posted 2010-04-13T08:22:21.547

Reputation: 4 389

Thanks for the feedback. What I've learned, is that ClamAV is meant to scan e-mail attachments on Linux mail server, so is not a good alternative to Windows AV solutions. Kaspersky Rescue Disk looks like the best/easiest solution, while building one's own AV live CD with UBCD4Win and somehow integrating a Window AV solution is also interesting but would take more work. – OverTheRainbow – 2010-05-19T08:49:05.053

AVG has a live cd meant for virus removal that I would highly reccomend. Alternative have a live USB stick with Ubuntu and a free anti virus, like clamwin.

tombull89

Posted 2010-04-13T08:22:21.547

Reputation: 6 533