Thread: Boot time scan

Hi GJ

Thsi referes to the ability of your antivirus sw to scan all of the files on your hard drive before most other programs load - useful in cases where you have an infection which cannot be cleaned because the "file is in use". It MAY help, but not an essential feature as many modern on access AV systems loas early anyway.

To run a boot time scan you need software that has this function. nod32, Avast! , Panda, and others offer this feature.

The other option is to boot the machine from a different hard disk & scan from this. (e.g. boot from a CD/DVD with antivirsu sw on it) This way you will scan/clean ALL files on the disk as none are loaded or in use.

Frankly, if you think you have an infection on your system that warrants this, you are better off scanning from a totally different boot disk as noted above. If you KNOW you have an infection, back up your data files & do a clean installation. This also has the benefit that your system will again run as fast as it did when you first got it (ever notice how systems slow to a crawl after a year or two?)

As mentioned, I'd suggest a stand-alone malware scanner run in Safe mode from a USB drive with any other malware programs that loaded with Windows turned off and with no network connection.

Running several of these is also advisable; there is no perfect single program.