I have been using Ultimate Boot CD recently to give myself convenient access to a hard drive that will not boot Windows for one reason or another. And while convenient to use, Ultimate Boot CD might not be the best all around tool to have on hand simply because the antivirus definitions are not very recent (a new beta release changes that but they will go out of date too naturally).
Many people don’t follow my advice for safe computing or to install competent auto updating internet security software and end up with problems requiring a rescue boot cd to clean their PC.
So when I saw some of the free rescue cds profiled in another letter recently, I thought I would highlight them here. There are pros and cons to each of the four, and rather than rank them as others do, I will just list them and let you look for yourself.
I really hate rankings unless one is head and shoulders above the rest. Reason being is that I know as soon as I write something in this business, someone has updated their software and what I wrote is out of date.
The first is Avira’s rescue CD. Avira’s AntiVir kind of jumped on the scene recently with some good scores in their free antivirus solution.
Bitdefender is a well known name and you can find theirs here. Beware that this is an .ISO image that you have to burn to a CD with either freeware or paid commercial software.
F-Secure’s CD is available here.
Kaspersky Rescue CD here. (This also an .ISO)
The nice thing about the rescue CDs mentioned is that they have a variety of tools on them, not just virus and malware cleaning tools.
Have these available ahead of time, before the problem rears its ugly head. That way you don’t have to borrow a friends CD and worry about whether his CD burner works or what software he has available to burn an .ISO image to CD.
