Reboots during a rescue disk scan

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Is it possible that malware can cause reboots during a rescue disk scan? I've been fighting off a malware infection for the last few days, and then today the machine started rebooting, or failing to boot. I assumed it was the malware, and so ran the f-secure bootable scan cd, but the machine would reboot before the program was able to scan. I assume it's impossible for malware to do this (when booted from a cd), but am asking to be sure.

 

Thanks in advance for any thoughts...

keiooz

I haven't encountered malware that powerful, but you can't be too careful sometimes. Check it further to see if it really is the cause of rebooting..

MJ-perComp

What malware are you fighting?

 

yes, theoretically a file that is to be scanned could crash the engine (as was possible with some compressed files) and finally  lead to rebooting the PC.

 

The Rescue Cd normally does not scan inside archives.

 

I would suggest that you do a  HDD scan and a MEM scan.

 

BR

 

do

Thanks for your responses...

 

I don't know what the malware is -- it's hiding very well. Main symptom is that it prevents Malwarebytes and Panda antivirus from functioning. And then came the boot failures, though I'm not sure that this isn't an unrelated hardware problem -- I've had a few instances of boot failures on this machine over the years.

 

The strange thing about the reboot using Fsecure is that the program hadn't even finished loading -- no scan was in progress (nor was any scan possible). So what I'm wondering is if it's possible for malware on the HD to prevent the computer from booting from a CD. I assumed the whole point in booting from a CD was because malware can't do this. But malware keeps getting smarter, it seems...

 

 

MJ-perComp

Hi,

you can try to use a USB-Interface to mount the drive to an other system and use that to perform the scan.Make sure to only mount the drive AFTER complete boot and signature update and with Autorun features off!

 

BR