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.
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.
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.
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.
(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.
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.