I wrote an article back in 2014 about cleaning up Windows machines using Linux. I was using a fully installed version from a 2.5" laptop drive, and it’s aged a bit. It’s a bit of a hassle to re-install it, and sadly BitDefender doesn’t appear to make a unices version of their AV anymore.
So, I used a Ubuntu Mate live USB the other day, but without persistence, when I reboot, I have to go through installing, updating, and everything again for the AV.
Just wondering if any of you know of a good ISO I could grab that already has a bunch of cleanup and repair tools installed.
I’m sure you have probably already found a solution, but I thought I might throw this in there for anyone who is interested.
I have used Hiren’s Boot CD for those kind of tasks ( https://www.techspot.com/downloads/6966-hirens-bootcd.html ) I found a few other linux based recovery tools, but none of the ones I found have as many tools as Hiren’s. Hiren’s uses many different tools with many different licenses, though all should be some form of freeware.
Another possible solution would be to find a linux flavor that has the option for a persistent partition or install linux with the tools you need to a USB drive.
2 Likes
Yeah, I was thinking about the persistent USB drive as well. Honestly, since I wrote this, I have just used a Ubuntu Live USB, then run the installer to install the few tools I generally need to scan and clean the Windows volumes. I keep thinking I’ll make a distro and ISO just for this purpose, but ughhh - who has the time?