Scanning another computer's drive

[Njem]

When I can't get rid of a virus by running malwarebytes on a system itself I take the drive out and put it in another system and let that system run cleaner. A couple questions about that.

For one, it first scans local memory and registry and such. Okay. If I know I have the registry set to not warn me about the firewall being off I can just deselect that at the end of the process before I tell it to fix things.

But is it scanning the registry files and boot sector and all those extras of the other drive, the one I really want to clean? Or how can I get it to do that?

Thanks

[noknojon]

Hi -

If you know of only one item to select then you can right click on it and select Scan with Malwarebytes -

If there is more than one item to scan , then it is best to run a scan on the unit -

Note : A Quick Scan is all that you usually need unless there is a major item to remove , then use Full Scan -

Thank You -

EDIT -

What Antivirus do you use , and is it updated -

[exile360]

It does not scan the registry of an offline system, only the active, loaded registry of the system that is running. It will only scan files on the secondary drive and will not utilize all of the heuristics capabilities in Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware when doing so as Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware is designed to disinfect active infections on the currently running system. An antivirus would be better suited for scanning an offline system's drive.

[Njem]

Really? That's surprising.

I typically use AVG for active protection and MWB to remove something that got in anyway. I turn off system restore and go into safe mode with networking and do a clean MWB install and update and full scan.

1. If that doesn't work and I have to put it in another system I should scan it with my anti-virus instead of MWB?

2. If I did scan an offline system drive won't it find the SAM, etc. registry files and scan them? Or is that what you're suggesting I manually select and scan?

3. Is there any way to get MWB to scan the boot sector and such of another drive?

4. I thought MWB was aimed at more agressively cleansing viruses that are already in a system than a normal virus scan would. But you're saying only if running on the system that's infected?

FYI The whole reason this came up is because someone got an infection. Even in safe mode with a clean MWB install as soon as a scan would start MWB would quit. So I did put it in another system and run MWB on it, put it back in the system and on booting it was still infected. A nasty virus. Looks like I have to reinstall everything from scratch.

Thanks

[Haider]

Hello Njem:

Please let me add:

1. MBAM by design works effectively in Normal Mode, unless instructed by an Expert don't do safe mode scanning
   
2. As already mentioned by exile360, when you take out the drive and use it as a slave, registry is inactive, thus MBAM won't scan it, however your AV should
   

Hope this information is useful

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