Clean Unbootable Infected PC with F-Secure Bootable CD Disk

Cleaning Heavily Infected Computer

There are times when you come across a computer, which is so heavily infected with malware and viruses that it is not even possible to boot it up. The first thing, which comes to mind is to format it and start afresh.

Formatting such a system is a good approach only if you are having a complete and latest backup of your important data. But if you are not having it, then you should try to rescue the system with an external drive malware cleaning tool. There are few reputed security vendors, which provide you free tools, which can clean such heavily infected computers. You have to download them, and save them in CDs to make bootable disks. They have a light operating system like Linux contained within, and can boot and clean your infected computer.

F-Secure Rescue CD

The well known security software vendor, F-Secure also provides you a a complete bootable Recuee Disk in the form of a ZIP file, which contains an ISO image, the manual and release notes. You will have to burn this ISO image file onto a CD with the help of a CD burning software. You can find lots of freeware CD burning software on the Internet for free download.

Rescue CD will by default scan:
- all hard drives in the computer
- all USB drives attached to the computer
- Windows FAT and NTFS drives
Virus definition databases are updated automatically if the computer has an internet connection
Virus definition databases can be updated manually by using a USB drive
The Rescue CD Guide (pdf) has step by step instructions how to use the CD

Rescue CD scans the computer and renames all files containing malware to .virus file extension.

As you can see that F-Secure Rescue Disk changes the file names of infected files, there are chances that your important system files, which were infected, have now been re-named and your system is not able to boot up even after the cleaning. In such a situation, it is suggested that you try to restore your system by running operating system repair disk to reinstall the operating system.

F-Secure Bootable Antivirus CD has the capability to software update its virus signature file when you start using it. Before making use of it, make sure that you have a working Internet connection. It will download the updated files on its own. There is also an option to download the updated virus signature file on your own and include in this CD.

Shortcomings of F-Secure Rescue Disk

However, there are two shotrcomings with F-Secure Virus scan boot disk.

F-Secure Rescue CD is localized to English only.

It is not able to scan and clean your computer if your hard disk is encrypted with with encryption software including Windows Vista BitLocker disk encryption.

There is a nice video, which lets you know how to use F-Secure Bootable Antivirus CD Disk to scan and clean a heavily infected PC.