Comprehensive List of 26 Bootable Antivirus Rescue CDs for Offline Scanning
A rescue CD is an additional tool provided by most antivirus companies to assist in removing difficult-to-remove malware without booting in to Windows. This is especially useful when the computer is so badly infected that Windows couldn’t be booted up, or is crawling really slowly and you can hardly run any diagnostic tools inside Windows to investigate and clean the virus.
A huge advantage in using a rescue CD compared to the antivirus installed on your computer is the chances of a successful removal is much higher because the malware is inactive since Windows is not even loaded in the first place. Unlike when a virus is active on the system, it can be very resilient and block any security tools from being run, making it really difficult even for experienced users to delete it from the system.
Rescue CD’s mostly come as an ISO image file that can be written to a compact disc (CD) or installed to USB flash drive which is then used to boot up the computer to run the live operating system in memory. Most of the rescue CD’s provided by the antivirus companies are free while there are a few that are exclusively available only to their paid customers. Here is an extensive list of 26 available rescue CD’s that can be downloaded and used for free.
1. ArcaNix
Price: Free
Operating System: Linux
File Size: 262MB
Format: ISO
Signature Update Method: Not Available
Default action(s) for detected items: Ask for action
Last Release: Updated daily
Additional Information: Has basic and advanced modes. The basic mode asks as few questions as possible while the advanced mode gives you complete control over the configuration. Testing shows that the scan is very slow and even missed a publicly released malware sample that we copied to the system.
2. AVG Rescue CD
Price: Free
Operating System: Linux
File Size: 85.9MB
Format: ISO and EXE (install to USB)
Signature Update Method: Online (Automatic), Offline and Download (Manual).
Default action(s) for detected items: Prompt for action (Heal, Rename, Delete, Report)
Last Release: 22 November 2012
Additional Information: Uses menu based selection and not graphical desktop environment. Comes with extra utilities such as Midnight Commander, TrueCrypt, Registry Editor, TestDisk, Smartctl, PhotoRec, Ping and Links. Allows you to install to a bootable USB flash drive from the main menu.
3. Avira AntiVir Rescue System
Price: Free
Operating System: Linux
File Size: 262MB
Format: ISO and EXE (burn to CD and save to ISO)
Signature Update Method: Online
Default action(s) for detected items: Repair, rename by adding .vir extension to the file if repair is not possible.
Last Release: Updated daily
Additional Information: Press Alt+F7 to return to graphical user interface if you accidentally end up in command line shell mode. You can launch Midnight Commander, a file manager to assist in backing up files by pressing Alt+F5 only from the shell.
Download Avira AntiVir Rescue System
4. Bitdefender Rescue CD
Price: Free
Operating System: Linux
File Size: 379MB
Format: ISO
Signature Update Method: Auto online update on startup.
Default action(s) for detected items: Prompt for action (Disinfect, Rename, Delete)
Last Release: 06 July 2012
Additional Information: Can be installed to USB using UNetbootin. Comes with additional utilities such as GParted, TestDisk, Thunar File Manager, Firefox web browser and Foxit PDF reader.
Download Bitdefender Rescue CD
5. Comodo Rescue Disk
Price: Free
Operating System: Linux
File Size: 50.5MB
Format: ISO
Signature Update Method: Online and Offline
Default action(s) for detected items: Prompt for action with clean (quarantine) option selected as default.
Last Release: 25 December 2012
Additional Information: Requires downloading more than 100MB of definition files before you can start scanning. Allows you to boot into graphic or text mode. Comes with PCMan File Manager, Midori web browser and screen capturing tool.
6. Dr.Web LiveCD
Price: Free
Operating System: Linux
File Size: 234MB
Format: ISO
Signature Update Method: Online
Default action(s) for detected items: Attempt to cure, and move to quarantine when failed to cure.
Last Release: 04 February 2013
Additional Information: You can create a LiveUSB by running the shortcut found on the desktop after booting with the LiveCD or download the independent LiveUSB installer. Comes with a mail client Sylpheed, Midnight Commander file manager, ePDFViewer, Firefox, and CureRegistry to fix the registry damages caused by a virus.
7. eScan Rescue Disk
Price: Free
Operating System: Windows PE
File Size: 325MB
Format: ISO
Signature Update Method: Online
Default action(s) for detected items: Renames infected file by adding .mwt extension.
Last Release: 08 October 2012
Additional Information: Some scanning options such as startup folders, registry and spyware are disabled. Ability to launch a command prompt from the eScanAV AntiVirus Toolkit program.
8. ESET SysRescue
Price: Available only to ESET users (paid and trial)
Operating System: Windows PE
File Size: 183MB (ISO)
Format: ISO, write to CD/DVD, install to USB
Signature Update Method: Online
Default action(s) for detected items: Automatically quarantine (delete) detected files.
Last Release: Not Applicable
Additional Information: ESET SysRescue can only be created from their security software Smart Security or NOD32. It requires Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) which is 1.7GB in size installed on the computer to create the rescue disc.
Thanks Ray for another good article! I would like to warn people about taking care of left overs specially ‘Quarantined stuff’!
Thanks for having this list, it’s a great resource for someone who is currently trying to clean an infected system.
Here’s my observations:
1. The F-Secure Rescue CD is no longer supported and does not work at all.
2. Avira AntiVir Rescue System is so far detecting the most items with Kaspersky Rescue Disk being the runner up.
3. So far I’ve used AVG, Avira, BitDefender, F-Secure, Kaspersky, Comodo, Anvi, Dr. Web and Trend Micro.
4. Bob.Omb’s Modified Win10PEx64 live CD is a good companion tool for working with an infected system.
thank’s for hard work i have Question about if i can make exception in avg or avast rescue cd becues my system have some crack software and system and how i can find dir of crack of sys win7 or 8.1
Bob.Omb’s Modified Win10PEx64 is by far the best rescue disk available for download. A google search for “best rescue disk 2017” i believe its the second or 3rd link down, at Slant. Definately better than anything I’ve ever used to date.
It also has a number of pirated applications on it. That’s what caused Hirens BootCD to get into so much trouble in years gone by.
Can this list be updated with things like website language, and mentioning which sites require you to download an application to generate the rescue disc(s) versus a direct .ISO download?
Arcanix is one example – website is in Polish, and the link to the rescue disc section now only leads to an app that downloads the .ISO (the other option forces you to select an .ISO, leading me to believe it is just a link to actually burn the downloaded .ISO….
Amazing list! Actually my notebook got corrupt after a system restore (never ending). Anyway, I lost all my files in program files (x64) and half of my program files (x86). It took me a long time to repair the boot. I was happy that I had the disks and Windows system repair CD I had burned in 2014 and the drivers CD which I did with another software. That helped a lot. Another trick to add is to get the offline updates of Windows with wsusoffline108 which uses the command prompt and bypasses all the troubles of the updates corruption… Nevertheless, I need to restore my back up of my hard drive (C:). But I used USB duplicator image creator. That gave me an disk image .img which cannot be mounted on virtual drives due to limitations and restrictions. I tried checking with their website but there is no help at all. Could you tell me how I could restore my img disk back onto my notebook? By the way I have Windows 7 x64. Home premium service pack 1. My notebook is a Medion.
Any help concerning the conversion and how to restore from .img disk image would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for any kind of help.
Neville You need to consider LIVE CD’s or use UNetBootin to load a USB stick with distros that can boot LIVE. Check distrowatch.org and find Lubuntu, Slitaz, Vector and Puppy. I use Puppy Slaco myself. Nothing has a problem booting this distro. From there you can consider how to install minimal.
You may want to check out the article on Tech Radar called:
10-of-the-most-popular-lightweight-linux-distros
Good luck
Excellent, but it would be nice to update it and say which are antiquated builds, and which are current. I alway used AVIRA, and Kaspersky, but I have a very funky old BIOS ACER 5003, and it won’t boot up from alot of them- now can’t do either. Last thing I used was COMODO but that has 15 minute online update, so the Defs are ancient. AVIRA had Defs updated to same day. F-SECURE in Norway is one of the best companies- they always find new terrible viruses first, KASPERSKY found things that nothing else did. Get ones with a big file- 50-100 MB is too small to hold all the virus defs.
Few people know about this but it’s THE ONLY way to clean your computer- the first thing every virus does is shutdown AV and prevent clean installation of any other.
Thank you for all the info, I have only 500 megs of memory on my old computer. It will be nice to know which software will run on it. The software I have tried all try to load a Linux version which requires more than 500 megs. Your help would be appreciated,
If you have avast antivirus installed it can create the rescue cd with the latest defenitions for free via the program
Thank you, Raymond.
Really good job.
16GB and larger USB stick are cheap enough these days to build yourself a whopping toolkit of two dozen bootable distros. AntiVirus, but maybe also generic Linux distros, a network scanner, stuff like Mythbuntu, etc.
In any case, the recommended SARDU has gone dark. The website is full of SEO text to get high Google rankings and when you finally find the download link, it actually sends you to their Facebook page. (this is on purpose–I checked the source HTML).
I tried XBoot but it crashed with some weird missing something something error. Rather than trying to find out what that problem was, I turned to YUMI, which works just fine. You have to re-run it for every ISO added to the USB drive, but it does the job. Some utilities failed to boot, but that may just be a matter of experimenting which type of boot loader works best for that particular ISO.
MultiSystem. Been using it for several years now. all of the below on a single USBFlashDrive, everything boots just fine from the MultiSystem menu.
I tried the others, UNetbootin is ok, but I have had better success MultiSystem.
There is only one thing MultiSystem lacks, and that is a USB-BOOT checking function, I had one USBFlashDrive which loaded everything just fine, but refused to boot, turned out the flashdrive was defective in the boot capability, took it back to the store for a replacement, re-installed everything on the new usbflashdrive and everything has worked ever since, so a boot checking function would be a great addition, other than that no problems.
linuxmint-17.3-cinnamon-64bit.iso
linuxmint-17.3-mate-64bit.iso
ubuntu-14.04.4-desktop-amd64.iso
ubuntu-16.04-desktop-amd64.iso
kali-linux-2016.1-amd64.iso
KNOPPIX_V7.6.1DVD-2016-01-16-EN.iso
robolinux64-cinnamon-v8.5.iso
tails-i386-2.4.iso
Windows7
rescatux-0.40b6.iso
boot-repair-disk-64bit.iso
Hirens BootCD 15.2.iso
rescatux.iso
systemrescuecd-x86-4.8.0.iso
BitDefenderRescueCD_v2.0.0_5_10_2010.iso
drweb-livedisk-900-cd.iso
Very nice post and great help with a laptop that a friend dropped off the other day.
Thanks!
Thank you. You saved me a lot of time searching for rescue discs. Once again thank you
Very good list. You forgot a very good program which I have used before to help out is Vipre Resuce
vipreantivirus.com/live/
Correction for Softpedia and this site, Raymond.cc, the Escan software has been updated, now 360.11 MB
If you make an Easy2Boot MultiBoot USB drive, you can copy all these ISO files onto the USB drive and boot it and run any of them. Add/remove as many as you like simply by copying more on or deleting some.
What MORON was allowed to change the Avira Rescue CD from just over 200 Mb to almost 600Mb? If you’re trying to repair a near dead PC, you do NOT want to wait forever to DL a link that corrupts in the last 100 MB, over an overwhelmed server w/ 160k bursts (& FAR lower sustained).
2 options of the
200+MB
& this oversized monster
would be fine, as I see the benefits of some of the linux tools included,
but most of the time you are NOT near an internet connection =)
But most importantly, many kudos & hats off for Avira saving our bacon, when dealing w/ family PC’s when we geeks go home to visit family!
Good list. Would be very useful to know which require or support 32-bit vs 64-bit hardware to work.
A very timely post and a great list!
If you want an idea of which providers products are ‘the best’, the folks at av-test.org and av-comparitives.org publish test results periodically:
av-test.org/en/tests/home-user/
av-comparatives.org/dynamic-tests/
Very Useful Tips to save PC.
I would like to see the same type of Article regarding To back up data in case of system is not booting( keep in mind there were no back up of system file before damage has done). Could you please provide us a list of free and paid tools to back up system files or how to get system data if PC is unable to boot.
Thank You.
Great information here. I would be must interested in your results via testing. In the comment made related to ArcaNix I would assume you did test these.
Ratings of them would be great too, but I am going to just start making discs and see what I find.
Thanks!
Good Job done,
for Avira i’ve bad experience when uses on PC with Linux installed. I think it’s not good programmed, after use i must perfomance an Filesystemcheck (fsck) on this Partitions.
Raymond! Whaddaguy! I’ve been benefitting from your tips and recommended apps for quite a few years now. Nice to see in the comments how much your hard work is appreciated. I wish you much success.
I agree with you Jim. I wish Raymond much sucsess in his life.
Hi,
Great article.
In my experience, often when using rescue cds (which may be general rather than the anti-virus niche) you end up deciding to simply finish any backup and then restore the OS, or better, an early image.
Then the File Manager issue comes to play, ideally you would have a FreeCommander type of dual-pane tool, Windows file comfy, backing to your USB backup disks, quickly with good visibility and features.
We see Midnight Commander (various), Thunar (BitDefender), PCMan (Parted Magic), Dolphin (Kaspersky), FAR (Zillya!) emelfm2 (SystemRescue CD) and probably some others.
So … I would like to know the best one or two to work with for this backup need. I find that the most important single need, since by the time you are not booting right, it is very possible that the best solution is an image restore to a fully clean system. (I did one yesterday, wrote about it on Donationcoder).
Steven
Ok this is something very nicely done. And it deserves two thumbs up. from everyone. thank you for your effort.
Thanks for the list but I don’t have room for all of these individual scanners. Hiren’s BootCD is what I rely on.
Thanks for the list. No wonder that 19 out of 26 run Linux.
Because Linux is free to re-distribute. Windows is not.
As always Great job, you hard work is appreciated. A real time saver for me.
Thanks Ray ;)
A Guy
This is the update I always look forward to. Great research and a huge time saver for me!
Thanx dear Ray for this deal. Wonderful.
Thank you for the list. I wanted to know whether you have tried them all and found to work well ?
I am saying this because some antivirus softwares remove some genuine programs also resulting in losing valuable time and money. (Personal experience-Avira anti-virus !)
Regards
Investigating and keeping track of detection rate for malware and false positives requires a lot of manpower, time and resources. There are some companies such as AV-comparatives, AV-Test and VB100 that has the statistics and it is best to refer to them.
What you can do is take note of the “Default action(s) for detected items” information on this article and use the rescue disks that does not automatically delete the detected files.
Great article Raymond!
Just a little question: are they ordered ascendingly from the best to the “less better”? Is “ArnaNix” the most effective one? Or they haven’t being compared to each other?
Thank you!
Hi Lucas, yes they are in alphabetical order except the last 3 because they are a bit different. ArcaNix being number 1 on the list does not mean that it is the best or most effective one.
I like your post, the download links and update info is really helpful, these companies hide their tools where it is hard to find them, I wish there was more details on the update process and the scan results, example.
yesterday I tested 2 rescue disks.
Avira:
If you have wifi with password, it won’t connect to the internet, I had to click on updategui.exe in the folder while I was in windows in a safe PC
Scan results: 25 warnings, 7 threats
Trendmicro:
I also updated it while I was in a safe PC, you can update it while creating the USB (or CD) so I guess it will save the updates to your system and use it to create the new disk.
Results: 1 threat (not really a threat) !!!!
Comprehensive! You ain’t joking here, Raymond! What wonderful service you provide for your readers. Thanks to HAL9000 who told me last week to keep an eye out for this newly updated list of Rescue cd’s. Will be bookmarking this page for future reference. Thanks again and do keep up the great work here on this site.
Thanks again for the update!
Great info!