Virus check boot sector

caveman · 15-12-2004, 21:38

How can you run virus checker on the boot sector of the boot drive. I the only way to take it out and make it the slave on another machine and run virus checker on that.

15-12-2004, 22:21

get a virus checker that can run in 'dos' mode - fprot is a good one, you format a floppy disk that is bootable to dos & run the check from there

swoop101 · 15-12-2004, 22:27

get the new avg7 free, it runs a boot check when you first switch on.

Shaun · 15-12-2004, 22:52

Both Norton and Kaspersky (the two I've used recently) check the boot sector. Most Arv's do.

Paul K · 15-12-2004, 23:09

A lot of anti-virus software out there will run boot sector scans on start up and will also monitor any attempts to change information in the boot sector.
Are you asking the question because you have fallen foul of one or are just making sure you are fully protected??

caveman · 16-12-2004, 07:47

I've recently been infected and successfully dealt with a number of viruses. These were not spotted as I think the virus checker was disabled by one of them. However because of some small weird behaviour changes, I would like to check there are no viruses in boot sector. I run Norton 2004 AV but momentarily since SP2was installed an icon appears in taskbar saying I may not be protected and then NAV kicks in as enabled and the icon disappears.
Now that suggests to me (rightly or wrongly) that NAV is only checking from that moment, or has it already checked the boot sector of the boot drive and XP2 security centre is too hasty.

AndrewJ · 16-12-2004, 07:51

AVAST! home which is free once installed asks for permission to run a boot sector scan. Very good AV to that is. Also you can ask it to do another at any time

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Paul K · 16-12-2004, 07:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by caveman

I've recently been infected and successfully dealt with a number of viruses. These were not spotted as I think the virus checker was disabled by one of them. However because of some small weird behaviour changes, I would like to check there are no viruses in boot sector. I run Norton 2004 AV but momentarily since SP2was installed an icon appears in taskbar saying I may not be protected and then NAV kicks in as enabled and the icon disappears.
Now that suggests to me (rightly or wrongly) that NAV is only checking from that moment, or has it already checked the boot sector of the boot drive and XP2 security centre is too hasty.

Boot sector virus infections should be picked up via a normal scan anyway, what behaviour changes are you seeing? With the NAV icon it could just be that it is working but SP2 is reporting otherwise by mistake. Was NAV installed prior to SP2 as I think that symantec released a patch for it ??
Other than that you check by running msconfig as to what is actually running on start up on your pc.
BTW, aren't the NAV CDs bootable so that you can run scans etc before booting into windows

caveman · 16-12-2004, 08:20

I've just noticed that the latst virus definitions have not been downloaded as I suspect live update is not working. I think my earlier problems altered the registry, I shall have to reinstall it.