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How to Run an Offline Virus Scan

The toughest malware is the kind that’s active while Windows is running, it can hide from your antivirus, block scans, or quietly reinstall itself. The way around it is to scan the drive with Windows switched off entirely. Booting from a USB stick lets you check the drive from the outside, where malware can’t defend itself, then clean what you find.

Step by step

1. Boot the FATALnet stick and open Virus Scan from the menu. Because Windows isn’t running, nothing on the drive is active or able to hide.
2. Select the Windows drive you want to scan.
3. Let it scan, then review what it finds. You choose what happens, report only, quarantine safely, or remove.
4. Run the rootkit scanners as a second opinion, they catch deeply hidden malware a normal scan can miss.

What to expect

An offline scan is one of the most reliable ways to confirm a machine is actually clean, useful before trusting a PC again, before a backup, or after a restore. It’s a powerful safety check, though not a replacement for a real-time antivirus product running day to day inside Windows.