Scanning HD in external PC

[gavinmcc]

When I've found it impossible to scan an infected HD (unable to login for example), I usually put the drive into a workbench PC which has all my up-to-date virus/spyware tools, including MBAM of course. I've seen some people recommend using a bootable Windows environment such as BARTPE to load and run antimalware tools. Is there any particular advantage to this method as opposed to mine?

[exile360]

Absolutely, it allows (using certain plugins) for the scanners to load the registry hives of the offline system, thus allowing detection and removal of threats in the registry which is sometimes the only way to detect certain threats because of randomized filenames and MD5's. That being said, MBAM isn't designed for either type of use (scanning slaved drives or using in a BART's disc, it's specifically designed to scan an online system for active infections. It may detect some infections used to scan slaved drives, but not nearly as many as it would if used in a live system (once you've cleaned it up enough using other tools for it to boot of course). I hope you have a technician's license for using MBAM at your tech shop also, otherwise it's a violation of MBAM's EULA.