ALWIL Software is introducing the first bootable antivirus software for Windows - avast! BART CD

The first and only bootable CD with antivirus and other recovery utilities working with any dead or alive PC/Server already running any Windows - even with SCSI/RAID disks and NTFS partitions.

Mr. Pavel Baudis - Vice President of ALWIL Software - told us: "I believe that most of system administrator remember the era of MS-DOS, where it was possible to insert system diskette to a dead computer and try to make it alive. With Windows and especially NT based Windows and NTFS partitions this way was lost. There are some products on the market which try to solve this problem but we believe our solution is the best. It works with any machine running any version of Windows including SCSI disks, RAID arrays of any make, NTFS partitions. And BART contains the certified and reliable antivirus based on avast! technology. But the best way to explain the great features of BART is to use it."

I am inserting avast! BART CD into Server. I can select even the nonstandard hardware like SCSI or RAID controller during the boot. Now I can see something like Windows XP on my screen after boot, but there is Windows 2000 Server on this server installed. That is OK, I was told that BART is working on all Windows version. Finally I have BART CD shell in front of me.

At first I am starting Command Line Interpreter, typing letter C:. Wow, I am on the RAID array and there are NTFS partitions only. I can both read and write files. How many times I have already needed to replace some corrupted driver - now I can simply copy it from a diskette.

Now I am trying Registry Editor. A dialog box allowing to choose registry file even from multiple operating system appears. I am selecting the one and I am getting a Registry editor. The change of one registry key can make the server working again. That seems quite handy.

avast! antivirus is my next choice. I am able to run antivirus on "clean boot PC" finally! As I was used to do it under DOS many years ago. In addition to this avast! has always been good antivirus and now it is even able to clean some most widespread viruses.

The remaining tools are Disk Checker for scanning and repairing disks in the same way like OS, and finally Text editor where I can change configuration files easily.

The detailed description can be found here.

Beta version of avast! BART is available here and it will be functional up to the June 30, 2003.