Virus Infection
Recovery Freeware

Virus infection can be disconcerting.  AN online scan can get rid of problems quickly and for free, especially if the virus has attacked your anti-virus program.  Use an online scanner from a different company than your own.

Quick Links

• http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ - "Ease your mind and scan your PC for viruses." Comment - If a virus has knocked out your antivirus, just go online.  Trend Micro is often the highest rated antivirus software.
   
• http://www.pandasoftware.com/products/activescan/com/activescan_princ... - "Scans, disinfects and eliminates over 90,000 viruses, worms and Trojans from all system devices, hard disks, compressed file and all your email. Detects spyware. 84 percent of malware installed on computers worldwide is spyware. Do you know if your PC is spyware free? NEW! Detects the following types of malware: Dialers. Hacking tools. Jokes. Security risks. Hoaxes." Comment - Panda is a highly rated antivirus software.  This is also a free online scanner.
   
• http://us.mcafee.com/root/mfs/default.asp - "McAfee FreeScan helps you detect thousands of viruses on your computer. Based on the award-winning McAfee VirusScan engine, FreeScan searches for viruses, including the latest known "in the wild" viruses, and displays a detailed list of any infected files. Should viruses be found, FreeScan even provides links to more information about the viruses and what you can do to clean your system."
   
• http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html - "BitDefender Online Scanner is a fully functional antivirus product. It features all required elements for thorough antivirus scanning and effective cleaning: it scans your system's memory, all files, folders and drives' boot sectors, providing you with the option to automatically clean the infected files."
   
• http://support.f-secure.com/ols/start.html - "F-Secure Online Virus Scanner is a free service. Use it to find out if your computer is infected with a virus and disinfect your computer if needed."
   
• http://www.symantec.com/cgi-bin/securitycheck.cgi - "Symantec Security Check tests your exposure to a wide range of online threats. It's free and efficient, and it helps you determine your Internet security needs."
   
• http://www.bitdefender.com/site/Download/browseFreeRemovalTool/ - List of 101 free specific virus removal tools.  If you know what the virus is, you can remove it with these.  Other antivirus companies have similar tools.
   
• http://www.avdisk.org/pages/en/about.html - “AVDisk is a program which automates the task of getting your anti-virus software on to floppy disks which you can use to start, scan and disinfect your computer.”
   
• http://grc.com/cih.htm -  "The CIH virus attempts to ERASE the writable FLASH BIOS of infected PC's, and also overwrites the first 2,048 sectors (1,048,576 bytes) of all of the system's available non-removable writable disk drives! While this behavior places the CIH virus among the nastiest of all viruses, the damage is more recoverable than at first appears..."
   
• http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ - Allows you to use anti-virus programs in the Windows “pre-installed” environment, which is kind of midway between DOS and Windows.  Weird but, after a Windows 2000 and XP disks are mounted, they start up a non-gui version of Windows that this environment takes advantage.  You can load all sorts of data recovery apps in this environment.  You should have a license for the Windows pre-install environment you are using.
   
• http://www.s2services.com/hosted-freeware/csfd.zip - "Clean Start was designed with two applications in mind. First, it has proven very effective in controlling inadvertent infection of customers' systems by technicians, software trainers, consultants, and others who carry disks to customer sites. Such infections normally occur when systems are booted with floppy disks left in the floppy disk drives. An infected Clean Start diskette will provide a clear indication (a yellow on red splash) that both the diskette and the customer's hard drive are infected. Remedial action can be taken right then and there, so that the agent does not walk away, leaving the infection in place."
   
• http://invircible.com/iv_tools.php#FreeDOS - "Certain viruses like INT_CE and W95.Spaces, take advantage of a vulnerability in MS-DOS based operating systems, starting from MS-DOS 5. The exploit is known as the circular partition trick. This is an extremely frustrating condition, as the computer with a tricked drive will not boot anymore, not even from floppy. Even experts are misled when faced with a circular partition and will replace the hard drive, believing that the hardware is at fault. The only way to revert a circular partition is to boot with other than MS-DOS, like PC-DOS, or FreeDOS, and fix it with a disk recovery tool such as the NetZ ResQ utilities.”
   
• http://www.s2services.com/hosted-freeware/zefrjpg.zip - "Demand continues for this widely used tool, which recovers JPG images after they have been lost to a LoveLetter worm attack (or any other reason). Archive now includes an NTFS version along with the FAT version. Millions (by now perhaps billions) of files have been successfully recovered by ZefrJPG over the years."

More Detail

Name - Trend Micro's Free Online Scanner

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Download URL - Scan Here

Developer - Trend Micro

OS - Windows

File Size - Not Applicable

(Online Scanner)

Supported Software Versions or File Systems - FAT32/NTFS

Developer Provided Description - "Ease your mind and scan your PC for viruses."

Comment - If a virus has knocked out your antivirus, just go online.  Trend Micro is often the highest rated antivirus software. 

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Download URL - Scan Here

Developer - Panda Software

OS - Windows

File Size - Not Applicable

(Online Scanner)

Supported Software Versions or File Systems - All file systems.

Developer Provided Description - "Scans, disinfects and eliminates over 90,000 viruses, worms and Trojans from all system devices, hard disks, compressed file and all your email. Detects spyware. 84 percent of malware installed on computers worldwide is spyware. Do you know if your PC is spyware free? NEW! Detects the following types of malware: Dialers. Hacking tools. Jokes. Security risks. Hoaxes."

Comment - Panda is a highly rated antivirus software.  This is also a free online scanner. 

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Download URL - Scan Here

Developer - McAfee

OS - Windows

File Size - Not Applicable

(Online Scanner)

Supported Software Versions or File Systems - FAT32/NTFS

Developer Provided Description - "McAfee FreeScan helps you detect thousands of viruses on your computer. Based on the award-winning McAfee VirusScan engine, FreeScan searches for viruses, including the latest known "in the wild" viruses, and displays a detailed list of any infected files. Should viruses be found, FreeScan even provides links to more information about the viruses and what you can do to clean your system."

Comment - Not currently available. May be added later.  

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Download URL - Scan Here

Developer - Bit Defender

OS - Windows 98/Me/NT/2000 /XP/2003 (Server)

File Size - Not Applicable

(Online Scanner)

Supported Software Versions or File Systems - FAT32/NTFS

Developer Provided Description - "BitDefender Online Scanner is a fully functional antivirus product. It features all required elements for thorough antivirus scanning and effective cleaning: it scans your system's memory, all files, folders and drives' boot sectors, providing you with the option to automatically clean the infected files."

Comment - Free online scan. 

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Download URL - Scan Here

Developer - F-Secure

OS - Windows 98/ME/2000/XP

File Size - Not Applicable

(Online Scanner)

Supported Software Versions or File Systems - FAT16, FAT32/NTFS; Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher; JavaScript needs to be enabled; You need to have ActiveX enabled.

Developer Provided Description - "F-Secure Online Virus Scanner is a free service. Use it to find out if your computer is infected with a virus and disinfect your computer if needed."

Comment - Free online scan. 

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Download URL - Scan Here

Developer - Symantec

OS - Windows 98/ME/2000/XP

File Size - Not Applicable

(Online Scanner)

Supported Software Versions or File Systems - FAT16, FAT32/NTFS

Developer Provided Description - "Symantec Security Check tests your exposure to a wide range of online threats. It's free and efficient, and it helps you determine your Internet security needs."

Comment - Free online virus check.  Also available security checks, but I don't like Symantec.  Too corporate, not efficient. 

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Download URL - Download Here

Developer - Bit Defender

OS - Windows 98/ME/2000/XP

File Size - Multiple Downloads

Supported Software Versions or File Systems - FAT16/32/NTFS

Developer Provided Description -

Comment - List of 101 free specific virus removal tools.  If you know what the virus is, you can remove it with these.  Other antivirus companies have similar tools. 

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Download URL - Download Here

Developer -The AVDisk Folks

OS - Windows

File Size - 604 KB

Supported Software Versions or File Systems - FAT 32/NTFS Developer Provided Description - "AVDisk is a program which automates the task of getting your anti-virus software on to floppy disks which you can use to start, scan and disinfect your computer."

Comment - If your machine is infected this might help.  

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Download URL - Download Here

Developer - Steve

OS - Windows

File Size - 21 Kb

Supported Software Versions or File Systems - FAT/NTFS Developer Provided Description - "The CIH virus attempts to ERASE the writable FLASH BIOS of infected PC's, and also overwrites the first 2,048 sectors (1,048,576 bytes) of all of the system's available non-removable writable disk drives! While this behavior places the CIH virus among the nastiest of all viruses, the damage is more recoverable than at first appears.."

Comment - Not currently available. May be added later.  

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Download URL - Download Here

Developer - Bart Lagerweij

OS - Windows 2000/XP /2003/BartPE

File Size - Not currently available. May be added later.

Supported Software Versions or File Systems - FAT/NTFS

Developer Provided Description - "Bart's PE Builder helps you build a "BartPE" (Bart Preinstalled Environment) bootable Windows CD-Rom or DVD from the original Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 installation/setup CD, very suitable for PC maintenance tasks.

It will give you a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800x600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS filesystem support. Very handy for burn-in testing systems with no OS, rescuing files to a network share, virus scan and so on. This will replace any Dos bootdisk in no time!

PE Builder is not a Microsoft product and does not create Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment ("WinPE"). Using PE Builder does not grant you a license to Microsoft WinPE or to use the Windows XP or Server 2003 binaries in a manner other than stated in the End-User License Agreement included in your version of Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. Microsoft has not reviewed or tested PE Builder and does not endorse its use."

Comment - Super cool. 

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Download URL - Clean Start Fresh Disk

Developer - FileRecovery

OS - Windows

File Size - 48 KB

Supported Software Versions or File Systems - FAT 16/32Developer Provided Description - "Clean Start was designed with two applications in mind. First, it has proven very effective in controlling inadvertent infection of customers' systems by technicians, software trainers, consultants, and others who carry disks to customer sites. Such infections normally occur when systems are booted with floppy disks left in the floppy disk drives. An infected Clean Start diskette will provide a clear indication (a yellow on red splash) that both the diskette and the customer's hard drive are infected. Remedial action can be taken right then and there, so that the agent does not walk away, leaving the infection in place." 

Comment - Bob Green's software. Apparently can clean infected diskettes as well as the above part which I don't understand. :-(. 

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Screenshot - None available

Download URL - freedos.exe

Developer - NetZ Computing

OS - Windows 95/98 and ME

File Size - 143 KB

Supported Software Versions or File Systems - FAT16/32Developer Provided Description - "Certain viruses like INT_CE and W95.Spaces, take advantage of a vulnerability in MS-DOS based operating systems, starting from MS-DOS 5. The exploit is known as the circular partition trick. This is an extremely frustrating condition, as the computer with a tricked drive will not boot anymore, not even from floppy. Even experts are misled when faced with a circular partition and will replace the hard drive, believing that the hardware is at fault. The only way to revert a circular partition is to boot with other than MS-DOS, like PC-DOS, or FreeDOS, and fix it with a disk recovery tool such as the NetZ ResQ utilities.

From www.freedos.org: "FreeDOS aims to be a complete, free, 100% MS-DOS compatible operating system"

The FreeDOS utility offered will create a boot disk, with FreeDOS system files, to support FAT-16 as well as FAT-32 partitions. The boot disk can be used as a free boot disk for accessing Windows 95/98 and ME systems. A 16 megabytes RAM drive is created on booting from the FreeDOS floppy, which makes it suitable as a rescue and general purpose virus recovery boot disk."

Comment -    

Name - ZefrJPG

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Download URL - ZefrJPG

Developer - Bob Green

http://bootmaster.filerecovery.biz/

OS - Windows

File Size - 71.3 KB

Supported Software Versions or File Systems - FAT16/32/NTFS Developer Provided Description - "Demand continues for this widely used tool, which recovers JPG images after they have been lost to a LoveLetter worm attack (or any other reason). Archive now includes an NTFS version along with the FAT version. Millions (by now perhaps billions) of files have been successfully recovered by ZefrJPG over the years."

Comment - One of Bob Green's freeware.  Note Bene - Visit Bob Greene's Site.  He has a low priced programs for recovering unbootable disks called BootMaster Partition Recovery and also has the nice NTFS browser for DOS that can be used with the same.  Freeware makers need to be supported.

Please note: Honestly the commercial software and services is the route you will sometimes have to take to recover your data.  That's not to discount the high number of high quality data recovery freeware generously given away.  On those occasions that the freeware doesn't work, the software in these pages will not be worth the time and effort and this can be frustrating. Unfortunately I can't make that judgment for you, at least at the moment.  I'm afraid I have to leave you to make the call from the descriptions and my comments.

The Google Adsense Ads
displayed on the pages should lead you to the standard commercial software and services available for the problem you are having. For software always be sure to try the demos first to see if the program works before buying. Also the difference in prices for software that does the same thing, for instance recovering PowerPoint Presentations, can be a large price range like in this case $50 - 299. If possible, try several software solutions before buying.  For services, be sure there is a no data, no fee guarantee, and a recovered file preview available.

If you need help, I charge $22 for the first half hour and $22 for unlimited time after that. You can E-mail me at socrtwo@s2services.com.