[Binary_Wolf]

Good day

Just got a few quick questions for all you Linux brains out there.

Is it possible to set up a Linux box to scan windows machines for viruses and spyware?

If so, which distro would you recommend? Which packages?(preferably freeware).

I'm most comfortable with Fedora and Suse, so i'm hoping those will suffice.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me.

Regards
BW

[CouchMaster]

I have heard of people using Knoppix doing this. Windows crashes due to a virus - booting with Linux and running one of the many free 'House Call' anti virus services out there to clean the Windows partition.

[Binary_Wolf]

Hiyas

Coming back here after a bit of thinking on the subject.

What i'm basically needing is a machine to scan other peoples drives for viruses. The machines in question have not necessarily crashed due to virus. They're just suspected of being infected. So i just need a machine with which i can scan a working drive to see if viruses and spyware are present.

Also realized that i need a data recovery package in the event a drive does crash from virus infection and/or user intervention. I need something preferably freeware as i don't want to spend money on something that doesn't work or that i'm not able to learn how to use adequately.

Is this at all possible, and if so could someone provide me with the names of such packages that could do all this? I'd prefer to use Suse9.3 or Fedora Core 4 as those are the two i've had most experience with.

Regards
BW

[DaijoubuKun]

I have a machine like that myself, but I use windows to scan for viruses, it's just a separate box that I can put another HD in. I've never tried a linux virus scanner so I don't know how well they would work (plus if the windows box uses NTFS you may have issues scanning and removing viruses). As far as spyware scans, I would recommend running those on the infected machine (after a virus scan). That way you will actually find more spies because a lot of them will hide in the registry. A remote scan will not be able to scan the registry.

as far as recovery software, I gig I quick google search and found these links (most are demos, but should still recovery for a limited amount of time)
http://www.runtime.org/downloads.htm
http://www.bitmart.net/download.shtml
I'm sure if you did a search of this forum you would find better recommendations on free recovery software.

[Binary_Wolf]

Hiyas again

I already have a Win2000 Pro w/SP4 machine for scanning the other pc's. I have all the recovery, virus, spyware software i could ever want. I'm just looking for a machine that won't get cross cantamination when i scan it for viruses and do data recovery.

Regards
BW

[Squashman]

Bart PE
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/