PC Tools has a released an effective antivirus live CD called AOSS.  The cd is an is in the iso format and is about an 80 megabyte download.  The AOSS is similar to the Panda Safe CD and the F-Secure Rescue CD in that it runs on its own Linux operating system.   Quickly, if a user’s computer is badly infected, it wouldn’t hurt to run all three of these live CD’s to ensure that a computer is as virus free as possible.

    The AOSS live cd includes the same antivirus scanning capability as the PC Tools antivirus series which include Spyware Doctor and a PC Tools Antivirus Suites.  According to the PC Tools website, if a computer cannot be started normally (in amnesia)  the AOSS should be utilized.  In addition, since the operating system isn’t started there aren’t any viruses that can specifically interfere with the normal operation of normal install of Spyware Doctor.   Viruses that interfere with  antivirus software have specific routines to disable Norton etc. An example virus is the W32/Goner-A which targets specific antivirus executables.  By running an antivirus live CD, one can assure that a virus like W32/Goner will not affect the scan and can be safely deleted. 

    Unfortunately, the AOSS isn’t officially supported by PC Tools.  A user will have to utilize their own burning software such as Roxio to put the ISO onto a rewritable cd.  Finally, the AOSS doesn’t include any functionality to put it on a thumb drive.

 Download PC TOols AOSS antivirus Live CD free                                 

    Bitdefender has just released their award winning pc antivirus for the Mac platform.  The concept is that by installing the Mac antivirus, a Mac user can prevent sending viruses to friends with a PC.  This makes sense as users will often forward attachments etc. without having them scanned for viruses on their Mac OS X.  Bitdefender has also included virus definitions for viruses and Trojans that specifically attack OSX.  Bitdefender Mac Antivirus would therefore work perfectly on a OSX server in which Windows and Mac PCS are connected and networked.    

    The Bitdefender includes all of the award winning features of the PC Antivirus. These include…

• A real time protection shield that constantly scans all hard drive read and writes

• Very low memory usage in which 1 gigabyte of RAM is more than efficient.

• A Norton Insight like Protection with suspicious file protection

• Ability to Schedule Scans

• And free technical support.

   Finally, Bitdefender for the Mac supports a wide variety of Mac OSX versions including  Mac OS X Tiger (10.4.6 or later), Mac OS X Leopard (10.5 or later), and Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6 or later).

Download Bitdefender for Mac Here