avast! BART CD - bootable antivirus and recovery CD

The avast! Bootable Antivirus & Recovery Tool (BART) CD is a breakthrough in the field of administration tools! In short, it is a bootable CD, giving you the capability to detect and remove virus infections on a computer. All this can be done fast and reliably, without the risk of spreading the infection any further. But the BART CD can do much more! It also contains tools for editing registry files and a tool to check and fix disk errors.

The latest version of the BART CD can be used on all Windows-supported file systems, i.e. NTFS, as well as less common storage devices, such as SCSI/RAID. In general, it will work on any disk device that supports Windows XP. It can also be used on non-standard devices, such as those used on servers, by using the standard Windows XP driver supplied by the hardware vendor.

The BART CD also supports networking. After network support is started, NETBIOS and TCP/IP protocols will be available. It is also possible to map network drives. Just enter the path to the drive (in standard UNC format servershare) and select the letter to which the drive should be mapped. After the drive is successfully mapped, you can work with the network drive in the same way as any other (local) drive - e.g. it can be scanned by avast!

The BART CD is a tool no administrator should be without - or, for that matter, anybody who deals with the recovery of data on hard drives. The license model is specified as a multi-node license, which means when you buy one BART CD, you can administer multiple computers, provided the CD is used on only one computer at any one time, and only by a single user.

avast! Antivirus

The main, and most important component of the BART CD is a special version of avast! 4 antivirus. It is based on exactly the same kernel as other avast! 4 Editions, which has been certified by ICSA Labs and ensures excellent detection capabilities combined with high performance. It detects 100% of ITW viruses/worms (In-The-Wild) and also includes advanced Trojan horse detection. avast! also takes part in Virus Bulletin tests, having received the VB100 award many times.

In the latest version, the user interface of BART avast! antivirus has been completely redesigned. A wizard has been added to the interface to guide you through all the settings. The settings allow you to turn on the scanning of archives (compressed files), and much more.

Sometimes, for instance, it may be undesirable to write to the hard disk (for example, if this would overwrite deleted files that you would like to restore somehow). Therefore, for operations requiring disk storage (e.g. unpacking archives to a temporary folder), BART avast! antivirus enables you to specify where such files should be stored.

The version of avast! antivirus, included on the BART CD, is able to repair virus infections. If avast! detects a virus it is able to repair, control is given to a special module that performs the first phase of the repair process. The user is then asked to start the operating system from the hard disk. The second phase of the repair process is performed here - the infected files, together with all references (such as registry associations), are removed. For security reasons, it is recommended to perform the third phase after another test from the BART CD.

A key feature of the BART CD is the way it handles updates (especially of the virus database). It includes a Builder that works on your Windows operating system (any version) and downloads the most recent versions of the BART CD components (Internet connection is required).

The Builder then creates an ISO image which has to be burned onto a CD (ISO images are standard input files in most modern CD burning software). Since the virus database updates are rather frequent, it is recommended to use re-writeable CDs.

In emergency cases, it is possible to use the updated virus database directly from the BART CD - by loading it from a diskette.

All programs on the BART CD work with UNICODE characters, so they are fully functional even in an environment where standard code pages are not enough (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, and also some European languages).

Registry Cleaner

The Registry Cleaner will help you find and fix problems and correct inefficiencies in on-disk Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 registry hives. It also provides ways to recover the registry following virus attacks.

The program is highly configurable and enables different registry cleaning tasks to be run.

Junk File Remover

The Junk File Remover utility will help you find and delete unnecessary files that waste space on your hard drives. It can also empty system caches, such as Temporary Internet Files and IE history.

It features very fast scanning and reliable fixing of any problems found.

avast! Disk Checker

Disk Checker is a powerful tool for searching and repairing disk errors. It is quite similar to the ScanDisk tool or chkdsk.exe, supplied with the Windows operating systems.

You can select either standard or thorough tests. The thorough test additionally performs a sector check. It is capable of finding bad sectors on your disk and marking them as such.

The program works both with hard disks (including SCSI and RAID) and removable media.

Data Shredder

The Data Shredder allows you to erase files in such a way that it is impossible to recover them. When you delete a file using standard tools, only the reference to its data is removed from the system allocation tables and the file's clusters are marked as unused, but no actual erasing is performed until another file overwrites the area on the disk where the original file was stored. There are utilities capable of tracing and restoring deleted files, therefore you should never delete files containing sensitive information in the regular way.

avast! Registry Editor

An absolutely essential tool for system administrators is the avast! Registry Editor. It gives you unlimited access to the Windows Registry files located on your hard disk (Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 only). The data in the registry can be both read and modified. Some administrators consider this tool a life saver!.

The program makes registry editing as easy as possible. It quickly scans all your local hard disks and tries to locate installed operating systems, together with their registry files. The operating systems found are presented by their name and root folder, thus avoiding the need to know the exact location of the registry files (usually OS-specific). Of course, it is also possible to map a specific registry file by entering its full path.

From the moment the registry is loaded, the program is (visually) similar to the standard Windows registry editor. Its user interface is intuitive and easy. The editor even makes it possible to load the data directly from a file.

Before opening any registry file, you can specify whether the file should be backed up. If you select this option, the backup will be created in the same directory as the original file. Every time you open a registry file, a new backup will be created. If there are too many backups present, the user will be prompted to delete the old ones.

Event Viewer

Event viewer is a utility similar to the original Event Log Viewer included with Windows. It also has a very similar user interface.

After selecting an on-disk OS installation to inspect, you can browse the event logs by selecting them on the left side of the main window. Records will be shown in the main list control. The main list control consists of columns that can be sorted by clicking on its headers. You can also add/remove or reorder the columns. Record details can be viewed by double-clicking on the record. While you're in the Event Properties window, you can navigate through the records using the Next and Previous buttons.

Services/Drivers

The Services/Drivers applet lets you manage services and drivers that are installed on the system. It also lets you make basic changes to their configuration (such as startup type).

Command-line Interpreter

Even though the tools described previously are very powerful, sometimes it is necessary to go deeper into the operating system itself. In such cases, the BART CD contains a command-line interpreter, compatible with the standard command.com and cmd.exe.

Often it is enough to delete a single file (such as a broken driver) to solve your problem; however, the BART command-line offers you much more! It has the full support of batch files; it also fully supports the XCOPY command, including all its parameters (as in the case of Windows XP).

Another key feature is the ability to run your own programs. Most Windows programs can be started in BART and you can therefore use your favorite recovery tool to restore deleted files or formatted partitions directly from the BART CD.

Servant Salamander

The BART CD also includes the popular Servant Salamander file manager. Servant Salamander makes it easy to work with files on your drives. In addition to basic functions, such as moving, copying or deleting files, is also offers advanced operations, such as searching files according to many criteria (including searching by content), group renaming, archive support (compression, decompression) etc.

The user interface is split into two halves, each one showing the content of a (possibly different) directory. Drag & drop operations are also supported.

Simple text editor

To make working with BART even easier, a simple viewer/editor of text files (Notepad-style) has been included.

This tool can be useful, for example, to view the report files generated by avast! antivirus, or to view/edit the user log files.

The program supports both ANSI and UNICODE character sets.

BART CD Shell

All available programs are presented using a simple shell that makes it possible to start the program easily. In addition, it displays the current state of the applications, license information, etc.

By exiting the shell, you end your work with the BART CD, and the computer is restarted.

avast! BART CD Download

Due to the nature of our BART CD product, we do not offer our standard try before you buy offer, though all other avast! products are available for 60 days free trial (just download and install to try our sofware. We do, however, offer a limited free trial of BART CD to qualified applicants. Please fill out this form to request a 14 day trial license of this product. You will get an e-mail with further instructions upon completion.

Please note: This product is primarily intended for corporate and service personnel use, and we regret we are unable to consider requests from "free" emails (such as, though not limited to, hotmail or yahoo!) We thank you for your understanding.