¤ avast! BART Edition

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

The latest version of the program is BART 2.0.

With the latest release of BART CD, the program now works with all Windows-supported file systems, i.e. NTFS, as well as less common storage devices, such as SCSI/RAID. In general BART will work on all disk devices that Windows XP can work on. Non-standard devices, such as those used in servers, can be handled by standard Windows XP drivers supplied by the hardware vendor.

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 \\server\share) and select the letter to map the drive to. After the drive is successfully mapped, you can work with the network drive just as with any other (local) drive - e.g. scan it with avast!.

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, such that, when you buy one BART CD, you can administer multiple computers, provided you only use one instance at any one time, and all by a single user.

avast! Antivirus

The main, and most important component of BART CD is a special version of avast! 4 antivirus. It is built on exactly the same kernel as other avast! 4 Editions, which ensures excellent detection capabilities combined with high performance. It detects 100% of ITW viruses/worms (In-The-Wild), it also features advanced Trojan horse detection. The kernel of avast! antivirus has been certified by ICSA Labs. avast! also takes part in Virus Bulletin test, 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 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, because it would overwrite deleted files that you would like to restore somehow). BART is aware of such actions, and for an operation requiring disk storage (e.g. unpacking the archives to a temporary folder) it is possible to specify where to store such files.

avast! antivirus, included on the BART CD, is able to repair virus infections. This is done in a sophisticated way: 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 virus objects, 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 BART CD.

A key value of BART CD is how it handles updates (especially of the virus database). The BART system works in the following way: the Builder part works on your Windows operating system (any version). It downloads the most recent versions of BART CD components (Internet connection is required).

The builder then creates an ISO image which the user has to burn to 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 the CD-RW medium.

In emergency cases, it is possible to use the updated virus database directly from 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 the 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 inefficiencies in on-disk Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 registry hives. It also provides ways to recover the registry from virus attacks. The program is very configurable and allows running of different registry cleaning tasks. 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 by software or hardware means. When you delete a file using standard tools, only a reference to its data is removed from 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 resided. 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 systems 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 adminstrators 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 necessity 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 has also 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 Event Properties window, you can navigate through the records by 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 dive deeply into the operating system itself. In such cases, 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, 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! Thus, you can use your favorite recovery tool to restore deleted files or formatted partitions directly from BART CD.

 

Servant Salamander 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 files by content), group renaming, archives 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 more comfortable, a simple viewer/editor of text file (Notepad-style) has been included.
The 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 set.