Using Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 – A Quick Walkthrough

Much of today’s malware is expert at hiding or camouflaging itself – making it both hard to detect, and obviously more difficult to remove. But, if you can get to malware before it has a chance to run live within the installed operating system – you have a real chance of detecting and eradicating the varmint.

This is where a Rescue Disk (Live CD), which I like to think of as the “SWAT Team” of antimalware solutions – comes into play. More often than not, a Live CD can help you kill malware DEAD!

It’s important to know though, not all antimalware Live CDs are in fact, “Rescue Disks”. And, not all “Rescue Disks” are in fact – antimalware Live CDs.

Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10, by far and away my antimalware tool of choice,  combines the best of both genres. Not only is is superb at identifying and removing malware but, with it’s onboard tool kit it, definitely qualifies as a Rescue Disk.

Note: Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10, is designed to scan, and disinfect, both 32 bit and 64 bit machines. As well, Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 can be run from a USB device.

The following is a quick walkthrough using Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 in both malware scanning and “tool kit” capacities.

Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 is available for download as an ISO file only, which means – you must burn the ISO image file to a CD/DVD, and then boot the application from your CD/DVD drive. If you’re unsure as to how to setup your machine to boot from your CD/DVD drive, TechPaul has an easy to follow tutorial – How to boot from a CD.

If you don’t know how to burn an ISO image, you’ll find instructions below.

At boot-up, Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 runs through a fairly large number of routines so be patient until the main menu screen appears.

From the menu screen, run the update task which will update the anti-virus databases. Following which, you can then go to “Scan your computer” or….

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you can choose to configure the scan settings to your specific requirements.

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As the application is scanning, you will be reminded of both the percentage of objects scanned and, an estimated time to completion.

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The bonus features bolted on to Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 include:

Firefox

The Firefox web browser integrated into Kaspersky Rescue Disk can view websites and save the pages you have visited. You can view all visited pages after exiting Kaspersky Rescue Disk. By default, the Kaspersky Lab website is displayed in the browser.

In the following usage example, I have chosen to search Google for “malware help”. Let’s hope you’ll never have to do this but, if you need to you can – without having to boot back into Windows.

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Internet configuration

By default, the web browser works with system proxy server. You can specify the proxy server settings when configuring the web browser. Since malware can often affect Internet settings, this feature can be an invaluable assist.

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Integrated file manager

The Integrated file manager will allow you to access the hard drive/s – as the following screen capture shows. As a last resort (if it comes to that),  you will be able to save your important files (any file for that matter), using this tool.

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Heuristic analyzer

Threat detection technology for threats that cannot be detected using Anti-Virus databases. It allows detecting objects suspected of being infected with an unknown virus or a new modification of the known viruses. This mechanism is fairly effective, and very rarely leads to false positives.

Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 is an extremely powerful tool, with many more capabilities than I’ve been able to cover in this short review. I’m more than a little surprised that it can be downloaded at no cost. A serious computer user would do well to have this application ready to go when faced with one of those –  O No!!, moments.

To read a blow-by-blow description of Kaspersky Rescue Disk vs Malware, checkout guest writer Mark Schneider’s – A Lesson In Malware Removal Using Kaspersky Rescue Disk, here on this site.

System requirements: Windows XP (Service Pack 2 or higher), Vista, Windows 7  (32/64 bit support for all).

Download the ISO image file at: Kaspersky

If you’re unsure as to how to burn an ISO image file to a CD/DVD in order to create a bootable disk, here’s an easy method. In this illustration I’m using a freeware application CDBurner XP.

1)  Activate  CDBurner XP.

2)  Insert a blank CD/DVD into the CD/DVD drive.

3)  Click on “Burn ISO image”, which will open the write screen.

4)  Select kav_rescue_10.iso which will reside in the location in which you saved the file.

5)  Click on “Burn disc”

6)  Sit back and relax until the job is complete (2/3 minutes).

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