Everyone installs one or other type of antivirus software in their computers which is enough to protect you from most of the virus infections. But in some rare cases, some new malware (called 0-day threats) can penetrate into your system under the radar of your regular antivirus software. In those case, you need to use a bootable rescue disk because it can bypass loading of the operating system installed on your hard drive and can disinfect your computer easily.
We have posted about many rescue disks offered by many leading antivirus vendors such as Bitdefender, Trend Micro, AVG, Arcabit, Comodo etc. But if you like the open-source antivirus ClamAV, then you can use the Antivirus Live CD for scanning and removing the virus infection from your computer.
Antivirus Live CD is a rescue disc that runs on 4Mlinux (a small sized version of Linux) and contains the open-source ClamAV antivirus engine to search and remove dangerous viruses on your computer. It has a built-in module for Ethernet or Wi-Fi network which is required for updating the database of virus signatures before the scanning begins.
There are two flavors of this rescue disk available – one that does not include any virus signatures and other that contains the virus signatures updated to the time when disk was created. The first version is smaller in size but will download all the signatures without which it won’t begin the scan. The second version contains some virus database and can scan your system using it.
The program is compatible with all file systems – NTFS, FAT, FAT32, exFAT, HFS, HFS +, JFS, ReiserFS, XFS, brtfs, ext2, ext3 and ext4 which means that can it be used to scan all types of computers running all the popular operating systems like Linux, Windows, MacOS etc.
This rescue disk does not begin scanning your system automatically for virus infection. First you have to login to Linux using the username and password (both are root) and then you have to give the command antivir to begin the scan. After this, it will automatically download the latest virus definitions and then begin the scan of the entire hard drive. You are given the options to quarantine or delete the detected virus infected files.
This rescue CD is clearly not for the beginners who have never used Linux and might feel confused by the login screen prompt. But it loads faster than any other rescue disk and can work even on older computers.
You can download Antivirus Live CD from http://antiviruslivecd.4mlinux.com/.