Viruses, Trojan horses, worms and malicious specimens of all kinds roam freely on the Internet and eventually sneak into computers. Malware creators are preempting increasingly sophisticated developments and advanced cyberattacks that take advantage of user inattention or apathy and software vulnerabilities that have not been patched in time. It’s time to act.

Successive lists of the worst cyber security incidents confirm that we still have work to do. And it’s hard to stay safe alone. You may think it won’t affect you until it does, no matter how careful you are, and you undoubtedly need to be. In today’s world, 100% connected and with dozens of devices used in every home, computer security solutions are a good tool to rely on. Having at least a basic solution is highly recommended, especially in Windows operating systems, which are the most used and attacked, and which we will mainly focus on.

Rescue Antivirus, why are they so useful?

Among the large group of security solutions, the so-called ‘rescue’ stands out, which are started from an external disk before the operating system is started and therefore have remarkable benefits about a typical installed antivirus.

Here it is worth remembering that there are malicious samples that are loaded into memory before starting the system and before the installed antivirus starts, it is unable to detect or eliminate it. Another advantage is that antiviruses in this group do not need to be installed on the computer or have to be permanently running, which reduces the consumption of installed resources and does not penalize performance.

If you find abnormal functioning of any part of your PC; you have random errors; you are missing files; Your passwords have been changed: default applications have changed, and in general, if you notice “strange” things, it’s time to check your personal computer.

Creation and management

Rescue antivirus they are created on external drives in “Live” formats. which have self-starting capability and operate independently of the operating system. Today, one can use optical media or a better, safer and more widespread pen drive. Virtually all of them are based on some GNU/Linux distribution, and the providers we’ll see below offer the possibility of creating them from their websites or from a downloadable .ISO or .IMG image that can be managed with specialized applications such as Rufus, UNetbootin or similar.

Once created, its use is similar to other rescue tools. You simply reboot your computer with the media inserted to boot from it, and if you haven’t already done so, place it as the first boot device in front of your computer’s storage drive.

After starting you will see different interfaces, some in text mode and others visual with many functions, although all of them have (almost) what we find in an installed antivirus, including the necessary virus database updates, boot scanning and disinfection, and files and folders on internal or external discs. It has direct access to the disk and file system and is able to eliminate persistent threats that the installed ones sometimes do not get to.

Choosing a free rescue antivirus

All major computer security specialists offer some type of free solution of this type. Unfortunately, not all of them are updated in terms of interface and functionality, although for these tasks it is also not vital, and it is more important to update the definitions of the latest detected viruses and its scanning and sanitizing capacity.

As we mentioned above, some providers offer the ability to create media directly from their website with their own creation instructions that are very similar for all, or an ISO or IMG image that can be used to create the media. We leave you with some of the free ones available.

ESET SysRescue Live

One of the best maintained and updated with support for all windows, client and server. It can be used from CD, DVD or USB and like others, independent of the operating system. It has several operating modes, “Scan on Demand”, “Smart Scan” or “Custom Scan”.

AVG Rescue CD

It offers two different images to create on CD or USB. Its interface is quite spartan based on text, but don’t worry, it does the job and like others before, it updates the virus database to the latest available.

Kaspersky Rescue Disk

Kaspersky hasn’t updated the interface for a long time, but its Gentoo-based Rescue Disk has great strength as a leader in consumer security solutions. You download the ISO image, burn it to bootable media and use it.

Norton Bootable Recovery Tool

It offers a wizard to create a bootable disk that makes it easy to create without external applications once you download the tool. Once you start with it, you’ll see a graphical but minimalistic interface with no customization options, with two main options: scan and clean.

Panda SafeDisk

Another outdated interface but very easy to use as it doesn’t have many customization options. It starts a wizard that automatically searches for available antivirus definitions and when you press the start button, it starts scanning the entire system for the presence of malicious files.

Trend Micro Rescue Disk

Very simple creation of rescue media by clicking on its web page and with the option of choosing CD/DVD or USB disk/stick. Its interface is the most spartan of the entire list, in a minimalistic text mode with few basic options.

Avira rescue system

Offers image downloads for media creation. A graphical interface with several functions, but easy to use. Like others we’ve seen with a simple interface, its strength lies in its search and disinfection engine and its ability to update the virus database, which they all do.

Bitdefender Rescue CD

Personally, it’s one of my favorites. Or I liked them because they were deprecated in exchange for Bitdefender Rescue Mode. It uses Linux based on Xubuntu, which allows more options in addition to eliminating viruses. You download the ISO from the link and burn it in between. We’ll leave you with a web.archive link where it’s still available. Like others, even if the version is not updated, it downloads the latest definitions and performs its function.

F-Secure Rescue CD

A super classic that has freed us from viruses more than once…. It hasn’t been updated in a long time, but it’s another one that can be used. There is no real user interface with Knoppix base other than a text dialog asking if you want to start the analysis.

Avast

It does not offer a direct image download and the only option is to create a rescue disk from an already installed Avast solution. The good thing is that this can be done from the free desktop version. You create the media and then delete it if you want.

Keep some of these on hand because sometimes they are necessary to remove persistent malware which are difficult to eradicate or even detect once loaded into memory and booted into the operating system. Additionally, these types of solutions do not penalize performance because they work independently of the PC’s operating system. It is very useful to run from time to time to check the health of the computer and eliminate security threats that threaten us.