Misc Questions

I assume you are referring to the Rescue Mode component of Bitdefender 2012 and 2013 products. We also provide a separate Bitdefender Rescue CD (and iso image that users must burn on a CD), like all major antivirus vendors.

Quick answers for your questions below:

1. Yes, a Windows Bitdefender product must be installed because Rescue Mode uses the antivirus engines directly from the Windows partition. A standalone Rescue Mode product is not available, yet.

2. Rescue Mode supports Windows XP, 2003, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Note that some newer computers (sold after Windows 8 was released) use UEFI at boot and UEFI does not support booting Linux systems (including Rescue Mode). We are investigating a solution for this. If Rescue Mode starts, no other compatibility issues are known. If it doesn't start, you will be back in Windows at the next reboot.

3. There are 3 scan steps: (i) detection, (ii) selecting actions for the infected files, (iii) applying the actions. The default action is "Do nothing" -- it just logs the infections.

4. After the detection completes.

5. Yes. You can view the scan logs at the end of the scan.

6. Yes, update functionality is available. Note that Rescue Mode does not support WiFi or PPPoE at the moment. If it autodetects your network adaptor and it receives an IP via DHCP, you can update from the internet. Otherwise you can update manually from a ZIP file. But note that the Windows engines should already be up to date since the Windows product updates them continuously, so normally updating is not required.

7. Yes, we use parts of TinyCore Linux.

8. SSD disks are supported. Some RAID configurations are not supported. Improving RAID support is in the works.

Hello,

I have some questions regarding the BitDefender Rescue CD. I never used it before.

1) Is it necessary to have BitDefender application installed in Windows, in order to use the rescue CD?

2) Is it unimportant which Windows version is installed, for the rescue CD to work well (since it boot_s without loading Windows)? I am using Windows 8 Pro 64bit... should there be no compatibility problems with this operating system?

3) When the rescue CD is doing the scan, will it automatically disinfect/delete/rename the detected files, or is the choice for what to do left to the user? I would prefer to decide by myself for all actions to take, in order not to delete false positives.

4) If the decision for the actions to take is left to the user, will the decisions be asked during the scan, or after the scan is completed?

5) If the decision for the actions to take is left to the user, is it possible to decide to "do nothing"? In case I would want to just take note of the detected files, and then load Windows to investigate about them on the web.

6) Does the BitDefender Rescue CD have an option to update the virus database files from the web? In this case, does the rescue CD have a firewall to protect the connection, or is a firewall not required (because BitDefender Rescue CD is already safe by itself)?

7) Is BitDefender Rescue CD based on a Linux distribution?

8) I have got two SSDs (and 2 hard disks); is the BitDefender Rescue CD compatible with SSDs? (I mean: should the rescue CD give no problems to the SSDs?)

Thanks.

@Bogdan H: ThomasBe is asking the questions for Rescue CD and not the Rescue Mode. So the answer to first question is no. You can use Rescue CD of any vendor, no matter whether Antivirus (of the same vendor or other) is installed or not.

Hi ThomasBe,

Here are the answers to your questions:

1) No, the rescue CD does not depend on having Bitdefender installed.

2) It does not depend on the OS as it is launching in an independent environment.

3) The customer decides the actions to be taken.

4) After the scan is completed, the user will be asked to take actions.

5) The user has the option no to proceed in any way if infected files are detected.

6) Before proceeding with the scan it downloads the latest virus signatures; firewall is not required.

7) Yes, it is Linux-based.

8) It is SSD compatible.

Please let me know if you have other questions.