Fixing Windows using a Live Linux CD - part three

Posted by: Rea Maor In: Microsoft and Windows - Friday, March 16th, 2007

Now to the actual usage of a Linux CD!

The Trinity Rescue Kit has a very complete manual, both too in-depth to repeat here, and too comprehensive to leave out. That’s here. Note that it’s a printing version, but you can also click ‘cancel’ when the dialog pops up and just read it online. The TRK docs are geared at getting you up to speed with the Linux command line and using the CD to perform virus scans and so on. For a DOS/Windows user’s-eye view of Linux commands, see the “From DOS/Windows to Linux HOWTO“

If you picked an easier system to comprehend, these Knoppix instructions cover how to use Knoppix to mount your Windows hard drive, install the f-prot virus checker, and get your system clean. It takes a while, but it is much easier to use a familiar mouse/windows interface. Similar methods will work from Xandross and Mepis.

Now, ‘mounting a Windows system’ is a pretty generic term. Windows NT and its descendants Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and currently Vista all use NTFS. Previous versions of Windows used FAT (in various forms of FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32). And a new WinFS file system is planned for either the future of Vista or the next Windows release. Currently, the distros I’ve listed previously should have no problems supporting the newer systems, but support might be scattered for something like Win95!

But beyond using the tools described in the links above, what about simply looking at your Windows file system to determine what the heck is going on in there, and possibly fixing it? Virus and malware removal is never a clean task. So for extra support, on either the KDE desktop or the KDE menu, look for a little picture of a house. That will open Konqueror to your home folder. Look for the icon for mounted file systems (media) or the ‘root’ folder and go from there to ‘mnt’; one of the folders within the /mnt directory will contain your Windows C:\ drive. Click that to open it, browse around. Konqueror is neatly integrated with the office tools, so any text file that you click on in Konqueror will automatically open a text editor.

You can now edit your configuration files (IF YOU KNOW what you’re doing!) to remove unwanted entries in the registry. Similar methods can be used for repairing AUTOEXEC.BAT, etc. But again, you should not save any changes unless you’re sure that that’s the right thing to do.

You can safely browse through the rest of your Windows directories. Investigate any new folders with names you don’t recognize. One warning sign that you might be looking at malware you didn’t ask to have installed, is if it has no documentation included nor an uninstall program. If it’s in the programs directory, is unrecognizable, and seems very secretive, Google the folder and file names to see if anybody out there has caught it misbehaving. You can delete anything in Konqueror merely by the standard right-click-delete form the menu action, just like in Windows.

A lot of this is stuff you should take very slowly indeed. When in doubt, just stick with the standard anti-virus measures detailed in the documents I linked you to above and hope for the best.

So far, we’re trying to move you through the steps to repair your system when damage has already occurred. But the best way to maintain a Windows system with Linux is to perform system audits, because you will track changes from one audit to the next and it will be much easier to track what’s going on. That will be covered the next installment. Don’t worry, this is much easier than it sounds!


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