You work for a small city IT department and one of the custo

You work for a small city IT department, and one of the customers in the vehicle maintenance department is complaining that his computer has become very slow, unusual icons have spontaneously appeared on his desktop, and whenever he opens a Web browser, an endless stream of pop-ups and browser windows open uncontrollably. It seems obvious that his computer is infected by malware, but the infection has also disabled the computer’s on-board antivirus program. First, you disconnect the computer from the rest of the network to keep other computers from being infected. How can you then clean the infection off of the computer? (Choose two.)

A. Run a stand-alone antivirus computer scan from a USB drive on the compromised computer.

B. Reboot the computer into Safe Mode and run the onboard antivirus program.

C. Create a boot disc using the onboard antivirus program and scan the BIOS.

D. Put the hard disk drive from the infected computer into another PC and then run the antivirus software.

Solution

A and B. You can download a stand-alone antivirus program on another, non-infected computer, save it to a USB thumb drive, and then run the program on the infected computer. Usually, portable antivirus programs aren’t a substitute for a full-featured antivirus application, but they can work well enough to remove the more serious aspects of the viruses and allow the onboard program to finish the job. You can also boot the computer into Safe Mode, where only a minimal group of programs are loaded. This will usually prevent viruses from launching and may let the onboard antivirus program remove them.