Malwarebytes with slave drive method

[Open-4-Biz]

It is not affective. It really is designed to be installed and run from the live working operating system. There are many other AV products that are well suited for this type of scan, ours is not.

What if Malwarebytes is used by slaving the problem drive to a bench test computer? Is it just less effective or can it do harm to the slaved computer system? (Ex- cause it to be unbootable)

[exile360]

Both unfortunately. It looses much of its effectiveness and also loses critical whitelisting since it no longer sees system files on the slaved drive as system files since they aren't in the system folders of the currently running OS .

[Firefox]

Well to answer your question....

It is a little of both.

It is not as effective in detecting all the malware on the slaved drive, it may detect some of the files, but it sure would not be able to detect the stuff in the registry as it can not load the registry hives for example.

During the removal of the infected files that it does find, it could cause that drive to become unbootable, and you may not be able to restore it back to a functioning drive.

[Open-4-Biz]

So when a computer is so badly infected that it won't boot or just won't allow installation of Malwarebytes, would you folks recommend using possibly a different AV software (using the slave drive method) or an AV boot CD?

[exile360]

Absolutely, that's what bootable AV discs are designed for. Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware is essentially a tool designed to remove the nastier active infections on an active system that most AV softwares tend to miss. For something to do a wholesale disinfection of a nonbootable drive I'd always recommend using an AV first to clear out the mass of infections, then, once the system is bootable again, go after the nastier things that were left undetected by the AV with Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware.

MBAM is meant to complement an AV on a user's system, not replace it, and the same is also true when using it in a tech environment to disinfect systems .

We try to make it as effective as possible while still keeping our place as a single tool in an effective disinfection arsenal, not to make an all-inclusive tool to replace normal antivirus software.