Clean Malware Using ArcaNix Bootable CD

If you computer is heavily infected by malware, then you cannot remove them from within Windows. For such times, you need a bootable CD that can scan your hard disk and get rid of the malware. The Arcanix is a free bootable CD from the Polish antivirus vendor ArcaBit – the makes of the popular ArcaVir antivirus. It is a free Linux based bootable CD that allows quick and comprehensive check of computer resources and repair of any infection found.

You can download the ArcaNix ISO image file from http://www.arcabit.com/arcanix. The download is available in form of a ZIP file. The file name is in the form arcanix.zip. The download file size is only 51 MB. You have to extract the arcanix-cd-20110112.iso from this ZIP file. The ISO file name can be different for you. You can use a free tool like 7-Zip to extract the file from the ZIP archive.

You will need a blank CD to burn the ISO image to. The burning of the ISO image to a CD requires a special program like ISO Recorder. You can read how to burn ISO images in Windows 7 to know how you can burn an ISO image to a CD..

Once the CD has been created, put it in the first optical drive of the infected computer and restart. You might have to make changes in the system BIOS to make the CD/DVD drive as the first boot device. Some modern computers also allow you to press F12 and choose a boot device to boot from. The computer should boot from the CD rather than the hard disk.

After booting from the ArcaNix CD, you would see a screen like shown. Select a language and press Enter. You can use the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard to make a selection and then press Enter to choose it. If you do not make a selection withing 15 seconds, then your computer would boot from the hard disk.

Then you have to choose a tool from the list. For scan the malware from your computer, choose the Arcanix – Antivirus Scanning from the list as shown.

At the next step you are given an option to scan in basic mode, advanced mode, restart or turn off the computer. I recommend that you choose the first option – Continue in basic mode.

Next, you have to select the partitions you want to scan for the malware. You can choose to list the available partitions and choose one or more of them. You can also scan all the partitions by choosing the first option Scan all found partitions. ArcaNix can scan both NTFS and FAT partitions.

ArcaNix would start scanning your hard disk(s) one file at a time. When it finds a malware, it will ask you for what action you want to take. You can choose to cure, delete or rename the found infected file. If you press R before making a choice, then the selected action will be repeated for all the found infections in future. I suggest that you press R and then 1 to cure all the found infections.

After the ArcaNix CD has done scanning and cleaning any found malware on your hard disk, you are given options to view the report, launch ArcaVir antivirus again, restart or to turn off the computer. At this point you can have a look at the report and restart the computer to boot into Windows.

ArcaNix is a free malware cleaning bootable CD to get rid of all those nasty malware on your computer. This can be helpful for removing hard to remove infections from your hard disk.