Emergency disk creation

Getting Started with McAfee VirusScan Home Edition

As it installs itself, VirusScan software will examine your computer’s memory and your hard disk’s boot sectors to verify that it can safely copy its files to your hard disk without risking their infection. During that installation, Setup offers to create an Emergency Disk you can use to start your system in a virus-free environment. Should the VirusScan software itself become infected, or if you want to be sure your computer is clean before you install any other software, create and use an Emergency Disk to start your computer.

VirusScan software comes with an Emergency Disk wizard that makes disk creation simple and fast.

The Emergency Disk you create includes BOOTSCAN.EXE, a specialized, small-footprint command-line scanner that can scan your hard disk boot sectors and Master Boot Record (MBR). BOOTSCAN.EXE works with specialized set of virus definition (.DAT) files that focus on ferreting out boot-sector viruses. If you have already installed VirusScan software with default Setup options, you’ll find these .DAT files in this location on your hard disk:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Network Associates\VirusScan Engine\4.0.xx

The special .DAT files have these names:

MEMCLEAN.DAT

MEMNAMES.DAT

MEMSCAN.DAT

McAfee periodically updates these .DAT files to detect new boot-sector viruses. You can download updated Emergency .DAT files from this location:

http://www.mcafeeb2b.com/naicommon/avert/avert-research-center/tools.asp

McAfee recommends that you download new Emergency .DAT files directly to a newly formatted floppy disk in order to reduce the risk of infection.

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