It’s about 2PM on a Saturday afternoon and you’re enjoying the weekend when out of the blue your phone rings and you see it’s a friend calling you who hasn’t talked to you for sometime. You think that it will be a nostalgic conversation, instead what greets you is a panicked voice saying that their computer is infected with a virus and they want you to come and help them.
One of the things that all IT Professionals advise when facing a serious malware infection is to disconnect the system and do an off-line virus scan. However, with so many different tools out there, it’s difficult to decide which is the best. If you have been using MDOP, you may be aware of the Microsoft Standalone System Sweeper. A beta version of this tool is available publicly on the Microsoft Connect website.
The first step of using this tool is to download the appropriate version (either x86 or x64) from the Connect Website: http://connect.microsoft.com/systemsweeper
This tool then allows you to create the media required to troubleshoot the system. It can be either a USB flash stick, CD/DVD or even an ISO file.
When creating the media, the tool downloads the latest definitions from the Microsoft website. The resulting file size for an ISO is no more than 250MB.
Once you have the MSSS media, you boot using it and it runs a scan to detect for malware using the Windows Defender Interface.
A full scan can take over 1 hour and it is best to have something else to do during this scanning phase. Once the scan is over you can simply remove it using the interface.
Simple but effective!
