Virus Questions!!!

[ChuckFinly]

How can I remove a virus off of a hard drive without compromising my main computer?

 

I'm fairly certain that the other hard drive I have has contracted a virus and I know that if I hook it up in a SATA, or even USB format--and start looking through files--that the virus might copy itself onto my computer, which is not infected. Who do I remove the virus off of the other hard drive without infecting my main computer?

 

Thanks.

[McclaudEagle]

Some anti-virus companies have released "portable" versions, which means you can install the AV onto a USB. You then plug the USB into the infected machine and start up the AV scanner. The AV scanner will not have to install onto the PC first as it will be operating directly from the USB, and this method also allows it to start up before the virus can detect and prevent it.

[ChuckFinly]

Thanks for the help, what virus programs do you know of, both free and paid, that offer that feature?

[blove]

Something like AVG Rescue CD might be the easiest option. Download, burn to CD, connect only the suspect HDD, boot from the CD, and scan away. Other developers offer similiar products.

[FMod]

A virus will not copy itself on a computer that has Autostart disabled and if you are looking through files using a real file manager (like Total Commander or FAR) rather than what windows has built in.

 

Furthermore, virus infections are very rare today compared to trojans. Trojans aren't capable of self-replication.

But it doesn't hurt to be cautious, of course. Just don't be paranoid, a disk can't infect things by itself, only running software from it can.

 

Kaspersky is the most powerful antivirus out there (it's slow and paranoid, but you need maximum power). A recent bootable CD image is available here for free:

 

ftp://rescuedisk.kaspersky-labs.com/rescuedisk/kav_rescue_10.iso (direct link)

http://support.kaspersky.com/4162 (support info)

 

To load it to a thumbdrive: http://support.kaspersky.com/8092

If you still have issues with it, ask here.

Edited December 24, 2012 by FMod

[Vagrant0]

Kaspersky is the most powerful antivirus out there

After using Kaspersky for about 4 years, I beg to differ. It's still not degraded to the point of uselessness like Norton, but the fact that the program can suck up more than 70% of your system resources for idle scanning just because you have your computer on longer than 4 hours, and make many safe programs take an extremely long time to load every time you launch them; stands as a rather large hit against them in my book. It also failed to find 3 actual files with trojans (some zip archives I downloaded but never opened because they downloaded to a default location I never use) that were inactive, but still present on my system from during 2 of those 4 years... Despite full system scans every few days that looks inside archives up to 10gb in size.

 

The current generation of virus makers have moved on from the days when they would create something to completely destroy a system, corrupt key files, or just lock the computer down except in some of the more deliberate and targeted cases (or some random script-kiddy who passed you a bad link). Most now are aimed at either hijacking your system (to use in a botnet), infecting you with adware so that you generate money for them and pass the pleasure along to any of your e-mail contacts, or are fishing for personal information like creditcards. In almost all of these cases, you pretty much have to run the initial program or visit a site with malicious scripting to force you to run it. Once it's run though, most will alter core processes or add themselves to startup services so that they start with windows.

 

For free options, I believe both Avast and Malwarebytes have program setups that allow them to be used from an external source, like a flash drive. Both are also fairly robust and reliable. For passive security, Microsoft Security Essentials is free and very capable as long as you have a valid version of Windows. Comodo is another good option for passive security if you're wanting more configurable firewall and application control.

 

 

 

For the future, you should make it a common practice to scan most files you get from an unofficial/untrusted source. If the file comes up clean from a local scan, but something about it doesn't sit right, you can try passing it through this service:

https://www.virustotal.com/

 

Virustotal checks against multiple signatures and algorithms and can usually defeat some of the efforts intended to fool common scanners (like McAfee).

[ChuckFinly]

Thanks guys. It is doing things like turning McAfee's real-time scanning off and will error when I try to do a scan of any type. Norton (though I would not trust that program any further than I could throw it!), will start a scan, but not actually scan anything. And Windows Defender just scans and does not find anything.

 

So I am confused and very hesitant about hooking that thing up to my main computer.

[FMod]

After using Kaspersky for about 4 years, I beg to differ. It's still not degraded to the point of uselessness like Norton, but the fact that the program can suck up more than 70% of your system resources for idle scanning just because you have your computer on longer than 4 hours, and make many safe programs take an extremely long time to load every time you launch them; stands as a rather large hit against them in my book.

Yes. It's slow and it's a big drawback. I would never recommend it for daily use. But it's powerful for its primary purpose, and OP just needs one scan here.

 

No AV won't detect everything, but KAV tends to rank very well at it, at least it's better at detection than Avast, and the bootable rescue disc (or thumbdrive) image that I linked to is free.

[ChuckFinly]

Now I have a very strange problem with that computer...

 

It won't connect to the net, wirelessly or wired! My other computers work fine, but this one will not.

[FMod]

If the trojan/virus problem was so bad that you noticed it - and not by virus scanner reports - you shouldn't try to reuse the OS. Just pull the data that matters, you can even pull saved games etc., then reformat the system partition and clean reinstall your OS (presumably Windows) on it.