Antivirus Live CD recommendations, please

Apparently, my niece was downloading things she shouldn’t have been, and ended up infecting my sister’s computer with a virus, or multiple viruses. After fooling with it for more than two hours, my dad gave up on repairing it, and called to see if I could take a look. I’m assuming the infection is a little more tenacious, and that I’ll probably have to boot from a different OS to clean it.

I have a good sized stack of blank CDs, as well as a 1GB USB drive that I’ve booted from before, so multiple suggestions are definitely welcome.

I’ve been using Avira Rescue System CD with good results.

Often, the problem with these live CDs is that a lot of them aren’t updated very often but Avira claims their rescue CD is updated multiple times a day.

The removal of Antivirus Live 2010 is pretty straightforward, assuming there isn’t also a rootkit installed.

I’ve actually decided to go a different route, by taking an external hard drive enclosure, and my laptop along. That way I can easily back up her files if I can’t completely get rid of the virus.

Thanks for your suggestions, though.

Sorry, I actually meant a Live CD, as in a CD that has a bootable operating system on it, along with anti-virus tools. I didn’t know there was a virus going around called Antivirus Live.

I have no clue what virus(es) have infected the computer, since I haven’t actually looked at it yet.

BartPE will do the job.

(I didn’t know if bumping an almost 4 year old thread, or starting a new one would be preferable in this case…)

I have a similar situation with grampa’s computer and a USB stick I have free. Has the market for a free, USB bootable virus scanner remained static? Or are there other good options that the dopers could recommend? I can’t tell what’s good and what’s not, based on a google search.

Thanks!

I’ve had good results with a Windows Defender Offline full scan, followed by a Malwarebytes full scan from within Windows.

Hitman Pro Kickstarter creates a good USB boot device, and includes a free 30 day license.

The Hitman Pro page discussion of ransomware prompts me to mention CryptoLocker. If you clean it your data files are gone unless you have a backup. If you don’t and you think your files are worth it you may want to pay before you remove it.