The alternative is an application like F-Secure’s Online Scanner which can be started from a web browser. This particular application is a Java app which means that the latest Java Runtime Environment (JRE) needs to be installed on the system.

Users can visit the official website to start a scan of their computer system right away. The online application uses up to date virus and threat definitions that F-Secure maintains for all of their products.

When you start the online app you are asked to select a scan mode. Available for selection are quick scan, which only scans the most important files and folders of the system, a full scan or a custom scan. Custom scan can be configured on an extra screen in the program interface.

Here it is then possible to scan all or only selected folders and file types. The program itself will scan for malware, spyware, rootkits using a database of known virus signatures and heuristics to identify unknown threats.

The program then downloads files from the Internet which may take some time depending on the Internet connection. The scan time depends largely on the selected mode and the speed of the system.

The application displays a summary after the scan highlighting potentially malicious files. These files can be deleted from the system and send to F-Secure as a sample (handy if heuristics identified an unknown threat that F-Secure has no information about).

The program is easy to use and comes with enough customizations for advanced uses. I would not recommend relying solely on online scanners for security though, but would recommend them for additional security scans on a regular basis. You can check out our overview of online virus scanners here.

I attempted to run AVG, Avast, Malwarebytes – but all for naught. The machine was so slow it seemed as if installing a simple anti-virus tool was going to take me an entire 40 hour work week. So I opted for a different approach. Instead of allowing Windows to boot, I decided it was time take advantage of my good old friend, Linux! That’s right, Linux can scan a Windows machine for viruses, and it does it quite well. And in this article I am going to show you a quick way to achieve this.

What you need

Amidst all the simplicity you will enjoy with the Linux scanning, there are a few things you will need. First you need to remove that drive from the Windows machine. That’s right, we’re going to attach it to the Linux machine and do a scan of this now “external” drive. I prefer to use a tool that allows me to attach the drive such that the drive is attached to the machine via USB.

You will also want to have a modern instance of Linux up and running. The machine can already be on. In fact, it’s better if it is.

You will also need to install an anti-virus on Linux. http://www.f-prot.com/download/home_user/ is an outstanding choice.

The “how to”

The first thing you need to do is connect the infected drive to the Linux machine. Depending upon your distribution, an icon should appear on your desktop. If it does, double click that icon so to ensure the drive mounts. Now check to where that drive mounted (most likely in /media). What you will now do is use your Linux scanning tool to scan that mounted drive.

Let’s say you are using F-Prot. To run this scan you would issue the command:

fpscan –disinfect /media/DISK

Where DISK is the mount point of your disk.

This will scan that drive and disinfect it. Understand that if one scanner doesn’t locate the infected files you might want to run a different scan. You can use ClamAV for email-based viruses (Check out my article “Scan your Linux machine for viruses with ClamTK” for using a GUI front end for ClamAV). NOTE: I will be doing an article on installing and using Avira Antivir on Linux this week.

Hopefully one of your anti-virus tools will have caught the culprit and either quarantined or removed the virus. Once you are done with the scan, make sure you unmount the “external” drive before you remove the hardware.

After the hard drive is off the Linux machine, re-install it to the Windows machine, and boot up. Hopefully you are good to go.

Final thoughts

You probably never thought you would need any anti-virus on a Linux machine. Well, if your Windows machine has become unusable you have found the perfect use for such a combination. And  remember, if you are using Linux for your mail server, you should certainly have anti-virus installed.

The file upload limit of No Virus Thanks is 20 Megabytes which means that it is not possible to upload files larger than that. The site has a rather low queue of 30 items and displays the current queue number in the upload form. It usually does not take long to process an upload though. The status is shown after uploading the file to the online virus scanner.

The report contains a detailed analysis of the uploaded file including results of each antivirus engine that has been used to scan the file. One interesting option of the online virus scanner is the option to paste a MD5 hash into a form on the website. This can reduce the time before a result will be displayed if the file has already been uploaded and analyzed by another user of the service.

You can also check the article about online virus scanners that lists several websites that will scan the computer with one antivirus engine usually provided by the software developer of antivirus software.

CA Anti-virus 2008 detects viruses, trojans and worms but not spyware and rootkits. It’s currently compatible to the 32-bit editions of Windows 2000, XP and Windows Vista.

Here is what you need to do to get your free license. Visit the promo homepage and fill out your registration details. The page is in German, enter the following details from top to bottom: First Name, Last Name, Country, Email, Email Repeat, Password, Password Repeat. A click on Senden submits the form and an email will be dispatched that contains a link to the download page that also contains the serial number.

The download button on that page links to the German version of CA Anti-virus 2008, if you prefer a different version use the following links : English, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and two unidentified languages abbreviated tc and sc. The second is most likely Simplified Chinese.

I tested the license key with the English version which accepted it without problems.

The guys from Virus Total have created a file uploader that makes the whole process comfortable. The 80 Kilobyte application installs itself in the right-click context menu as a Send To entry which in effect means that you can right-click a file on your computer and select Send To > Virus Total to send it to their website to scan the file.

A browser window will open displaying the scan results in the end. This is way more comfortable than to open the Virus Total website and browse for the file on your hard drive once you are there.

The file size limitation of ten Megabytes is still in place however. Another option that you might want to explore is to send them files by email [scan@virustotal.com]. A report is send to the email address that you have used to send the file.

According to their statistics which are updated when scanning computers 10.90% of all PCs scanned were infected. PCs with Antivirus installed had a infection rate of 8.62% while PCs without Antivirus were infected 14.56% of the times.

Infected or Not displays the rate of infected PCs using a Google Maps mashup. France for instance is the country in Europe with the highest amount of infected PCs (16.41%) while Sweden (4.17%) and Germany (5.33%) have the least amount of infections. The United States has an infection rate of 10.34 btw.

The scan works with Firefox after installing an add-on which can only be uninstalled from the default installation location which is at C:\Program Files\Panda Security\NanoScan. Execute the file nanounst.exe to uninstall it again.

Antivir reported a trojan during installation and execution which can be considered a false positive. In case you are wondering why I have Antivir installed, I did not test this from my main computer.

Creating the file is pretty simple. Just create a new text file and paste the following line of code into it: X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

Save the file and rename it to test.com. When executed it displays the message EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE. No harm will be done to your system if you accidentally execute the file. To test your virus scanner right-click the file and select to test it with your software.

You could also pack it and test it or send it to your email account to test the interaction between virus scanner and email client. After the test finishes you do know if your virus scanner is working as intended and able to detect viruses on your system. This does not necessarily mean that it will detect every virus that exists but it means that it is working.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus Products