Partition and antivirus
 

I'm under the impression that my system has a virus. I used avast antivirus to scan it. I've scanned my C drive before and it seemed like I was out of the clear after Avast!, my antivirus cleaned it out. But now it seems like the virus is back, and I think its in my D drive. My D drive, is set up as a recovery drive. The problem is, everytime I scan the D drive, my antivirus gets hung up on a file in it. The file is something like Security log or something. I want to know if I should clean out the partition so its empty, and scan then. And If I should, how do I empty it?

Did ya try another scanner? There are several online scanners available, including http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ which is decent.

Also are you sure that the antivirus is actually crapping out on that file, or is just taking it forever to scan that file.

For fun post the full name (including extension), location, and size of the file. Also you could try opening it in notepad, if it is really a log file then it would probably be human readable, it would also be safe to just delete most likely assuming it is legitimate.

I'm assuming its getting stuck on it, becuase i've left it for over 12 hours just on that file. The file is D:\Windows\System32\config\security.log2 and it was last modified 6/27/07, and is 0KB in file size. I've tried deleting it before and running the virus scan, and it seemed to have just popped back.

I'll try the scanner you sent, maybe it'll detect something avast! can not.

Dont forget to turn off recovery in windows before scanning, some viruses use this system to survive.

As far as I can tell that is a windows file, and it is normally locked off (in use) while windows is running. I would suggest scanning with a boot anti virus disk if you have one. Most anti virus programs just skip that file and move on

Given its file size though i doubt it is an infected file.

Thats the thing, it gets stuck on the file when I do a boot scan.

Hmm you mean it gets stuck when booting off a cd or floppy disk and scanning from there?

Avast! has a boot scan, I'm assuming its just like scanning from an actual boot disk. When I do a boot scan it still gets stuck on that file.

I don't think boot scanning will do it, as I believe that file is part of windows directly, as such it will already be in use by windows before the scan can start.

What you need to do is be able to scan it with out windows loaded or running (that way it cant lock off anything). This is also how one gets around viruses blocking removal.

You also may want to run chkdsk as well to make sure its not a problem with the drive itself.

As far as I know though, viruses don't target that file (they usually go after dlls, executables, and installers). So you could just add that file to the ignore list of Avast, and finish the scan (assuming it has an ignore file list).

Anyhow it looks like the normal avast doesn't offer a boot disk virus scanner (has to be purchased separately or you need an advanced version of the software). So if its simpler just wipe and remake the partition (format it, or if your paranoid, delete the partition, remake it and then format the new partition etc)