Thursday, May 22, 2008

Antivirus on the go - ClamWin on CD

I have been searching for a neat CD-based antivirus scanner that's easy to carry around to scan and clean infected PCs. Came across ClamWin (v o.93 as of this post) which seems to fit my needs. Creating a portable CD for ClamWin is easy; using it is not so straightforward.

1. Ref to http://www.clamwin.com/content/view/118/89/ on instructions to create the CD. You may use the manual method or the pre-built files from Portableapps.com. For Portableapps, refer to http://portableapps.com/support/clamwin_portable#cd

2. Both manual and the pre-built files methods from portableapps.com prompt for virus definitions database upon starting. It appears that copying of files to CD somehow alters the File Locations in the preferences.

3. To use ClamWin, when you are prompted that virus definitions database is not found and if you want to download, select No. Then, go to Tools-Preferences-File Locations and set all to reference the drive letter for the CDROM drive.

For ClamWinPortable, the locations are:
D:\ClamWinPortable\App\clamwin\bin for the first 2 locations, and D:\ClamWinPortable\Data\db for the virus definition location.

For the manual method, the locations are:
D:\ClamWin\bin for the first 2 locations, and
D:\ClamWin\db for the virus definition location.

Note: If you are prompted that ClamAV is not configured and whether you want to, select Yes. Then fill in the file locations above, and also the locations for the Reports (use the default that shows up in the prompt).

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