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VirusScan
®
Command Line 5.20.0 Product Guide
Removing Infections
If the scanner detects a virus
4
Running additional virus-cleaning tasks
These tasks include:
Cleaning macro viruses from password-protected files
.
Cleaning Windows NT hard disks
.
Cleaning macro viruses from password-protected files
The scanner respects users’ passwords and usually leaves them intact. For example,
in some password-protected Microsoft Excel files, the scanner removes macro viruses
without disturbing users’ passwords.
However, macro viruses that infect Microsoft Word files sometimes plant their own
passwords. Depending on the capabilities of the virus, the scanner takes one of the
following actions when trying to clean a password-protected file:
If the macro virus can plant its own password:
The scanner cleans the file, removes the planted password, and removes the virus.
If the macro virus cannot plant its own password
:
The scanner notes the infection but does not remove the password.
Cleaning Windows NT hard disks
To clean the Master Boot Record (MBR) on a hard disk formatted with the Microsoft
Windows NT file system (NTFS):
1
Start the computer that has the NTFS file system partition from a virus-free MS-DOS
boot disk.
2
Run the scanner, using
SCAN /BOOT /CLEAN
. Be sure to run the scanner from a disk
that you know is free from viruses.
This cleans the NTFS file system Master Boot Record, but the scanner cannot read the
rest of the NTFS file system partition when you boot into a MS-DOS environment. To
scan the rest of the NTFS file system partition, reboot into Windows NT, then run the
scanner again.
Caution
Take care if you are using more than one of these options in combination. For example,
if you specify
/MOVE
and
/CLEAN
together, the scanner creates a copy of an infected
file in the specified quarantine directory before attempting to clean the file. If you want
to keep an infected copy for investigation, this is useful, but if you intend only to remove
any virus that might be present on the computer, it is more beneficial and more secure
to use
/CLEAN
on its own. Generally speaking, simply specifying more command-line
options does not necessarily increase the benefit of the scanning.
