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Stand-Alone Antivirus Software?

Posted by timothy on from the lonely-job dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I work for a company that repairs specialty devices that have an embedded Mini-ATX motherboard without a CD-ROM drive and run Windows XP Home. And while the USB flash drives we insert into them have a physical write-protect tab, we still encounter a (rather annoying) display dialog from malware/viruses to remove the write-protect so the malware can infect the flash drive. We don't remove the write-protect, obviously, but would like to offer our customers the option of removing the malware/virus without having to install any software. We would rather not install/uninstall antivirus software even for one-time use, due to various licensing issues, nor do we want to connect to the Internet to use web-based online scanners. Is there any stand-alone anti-virus/anti-malware software for Windows that can be run directly from the write-protected flash drive itself?"

3 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Plenty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    ClamWin, Dr. Web CureIt: etc http://thepcsecurity.com/ultimate-list-of-portable-antiviruses-for-your-usb/

  2. UBCD by 0racle · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.ubcd4win.com/

    There are several AV products that can be slipstreamed into it, and there are instructions on installing the Ultimate Boot CD onto a thumbdrive, which is handy for keeping AV signatures up to date.

    --
    "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
  3. Yes! The old school SCAN.EXE and CLEAN.EXE by Saint+Stephen · · Score: 5, Informative

    Back in the BBS days, from MacAffee, you could download SCAN.EXE and CLEAN.EXE and run them on DOS.

    And - you still can!

    Go to their website and find the command line scanner for win32. It claims to be a trial version, but with no install routine and being a command line program, that doesn't mean much. It uses the same .DAT files that you download for any other VirusScan program.

    I get a huge chuckle when I run it, because it's exactly the same way it was in 1988 and that's the way it oughta be. all this other crap is fer lamos :-)