Recently I stumbled on a Rescue Live CD provided by Vba32 for free. The good thing about Rescue CDs are it can scan and remove virus even without booting in to Windows. Usually it is booted from a Linux LiveCD and autoruns the scanner module. If your computer has been infected by a virus but unable to boot up to Windows / safe mode or it is too slow to do anything on it, rescue CD is probably your only chance to remove the virus and get Windows working again.
VBA32 is a less well known antivirus company internationally but it is well established in Belarus. VirusBlokAda Ltd. has been established in May, 1997. The Vba32 products are successfully used in The National Bank of The Republic of Belarus, in all sorts of the Belarusian organizations and enterprises. Also it is installed at the mail servers of such Belarusian Internet providers as tut.by and mail.by. Vba32 is the first antivirus software which has been certified in The State Centre of Information Security supported by the President of The Republic of Belarus.
VBA Rescue runs on Linux LiveCD and uses VBA32 Console Scanner for Linux (Vba32.L). VBA32 Rescue doesn’t contain any fancy looking graphics or interface. The menus are simple and easy to navigate through so you shouldn’t have a problem using it. To get your free VBA Rescue, just download the ISO image (72 MB) from the link located at the end of this article. Burn the ISO image with your favorite disc recording software. If you’re unsure how to burn ISO image to a CD, read this article. Insert the VBA Rescue disc and set your computer to boot up with it. You should see a menu that looks like the image below. If you’re unsure which resolution can your computer support, just select the first one by simply hitting the ENTER key.
Next you’ll get to select the language of the interface. Currently it only supports English and Russian.
You will get an information window advising you on how to work in VBA Rescue Menu. Hit enter to continue. Now you get to configure VBA Rescue on where to scan, what files to scan, what to do with the infected file, Midnight Commander File Manager and etc. When you’re done configuring, select the second option “Scanning files” to start scanning your computer for viruses with VBA Rescue.Good news is before VBA Rescue starts scanning, it will check for the latest virus signature and updates automatically.
You will need a computer with i586 CPU and 128MB of RAM. It only supports NTFS and FAT file systems. Vba32 Rescue supports auto-mounting including removable devices so you don’t need to know or memorize those elite linux mount commands. NTFS state is checked during mounting and additional confirmation dialog such as the partition was unmounted incorrectly and the partition contains system memory image (hibernate).
I personally have never heard of Vba32 antivirus before but I’ve seen it appear in VirusTotal, AV-Comparatives, Virus Bulletin, Anti-Malware Test Lab and virus.gr. Unfortunately Vba32 doesn’t perform very well at all of the tests conducted by the test lab. In my opinion, Vba32 wouldn’t be the best choice to use on desktop computer for real-time protection but no harm having another rescue disc in hand when other rescue disk fails to boot up. Do take note that currently VBA Rescue is still in BETA.