F-Secure Anti-Virus for DOS
F-Secure offers a free antivirus program
for DOS. This can be run from a command line within windows or you can boot
the system from a DOS floppy or CD when you can't get Windows to start properly
or want to run an antivirus program from outside of Windows. The program is
available from F-Secure at
Free Virus
Removal Tools, which provides a link for downloading the software
from F-Secure's FTP site at
ftp://ftp.f-secure.com/anti-virus/free/. Download fp-xxx.zip, where
"xxx" is the latest version shown on the FTP site, e.g. fp-312d as of
October 9, 2006. Then download the latest
virus definitions from
ftp://ftp.f-secure.com/anti-virus/updates/f-prot/dos/. You will need
macro.def,
sign.def, and
sign2.def. The macrodef2.zip file is simply a zipped version of
macro.def with a PGP signature in macro.asc; you don't need it if you download
macro.def. Place macro.def, sign.def, and sign2.def in the same directory
where you place the f-prot program that is in the fp-xxx.zip file you
downloaded, overwriting the older versions that are in that zip file.
macro.def - macro viruses definition database for F-Prot for DOS
sign.def - binary viruses definition database for F-Prot for DOS
sign2.def - additional binary viruses definition database for F-Prot for DOS
To run the program, obtain a command prompt and change your working directory
to the directory where you unzipped F-Prot, e.g. cd \f-prot.
Then start the program with the command f-prot for an interface
that will allow you to select options from a menu. If you don't have a floppy
drive in the system you are using, then you need to use f-prot
/nofloppy instead.
You can select menu entries using the cursor keys to move about. If you only
want to scan a particular file or directory, take the following steps.
- Hit enter with Scan selected.
- In the start menu, move down to Search, hit Enter, which
will bring up a menu of locations to scan, which includes local hard
disks, Diskette drive A:, Network drives, CD-ROM
drives, and User-specified.
- Select User-specified and hit Enter.
- In the search field, type the file name or directory you wish to scan.
- Then move the cursor up to the Start menu option again and hit
enter to start scanning.
A window will be displayed that shows the results of the scan.
If you hit enter at this point, you can choose to save or print the results
of the scan.
