[solved] Is there a free command line antivirus scanner?

[freebird73717]

Hey everyone!

I'm curious if any of you know of a free command line antivirus software that's worth using? I am looking for a command line av for automation. I have lots of clients that I install antivirus software (avast free) that are very tech challenged. Most of these people just don't know how to use the software. I was thinking that I could install avast to use for real-time scanning/monitoring and then have a command line AV that could be run from Windows task scheduler at a preset time with command options to auto update, and auto delete/move to chest. This would make their machines much more protected without user involvment... Unfortunately most of the command line av that I have found is not freeware...

Or should I just leave well enough alone so that I can get repeat business cleaning out the viri that would inevitably re-infest their systems!

--edit Okay after doing some more research I have found that AVG free can be run from the command line and should be able to do what I want....however I'm just not a huge fan of AVG. It is what I will use though if I can't come up with some other option.

---edit#2 I solved this problem. Look to this post to see the solution.

[bendixG15]

I know a lot of "tech challenged" people who in reality are lazy SOBs that would rather take a month of crying for help rather than the 10 minutes to learn how to do it.
Its an ego thing with them "Oh, I'll just have my boy do it".
So I ask you, if they can't click on "start" to begin the software, how are they going to exit when the scan is done and they get all those choices to pick one ?

I agree with you ..........Or should I just leave well enough alone so that I can get repeat business cleaning out the viri that would inevitably re-infest their systems!

Either way, happy hunting................

[freebird73717]

Yeah I guess the "good samaritan" in me wants to make it easier for them, but I guess I should listen to my business sense and just get them cleaned up and then have them call me back for another service call when they get infected again.

As long as they are willing to pay I'm more than happy to do it for them and let them be lazy. Pays my bills!

[freebird73717]

Well as a follow up I did find a command line scanner that I was able to use in a batch script for automated scanning in conjunction with windows task scheduler.

It is trend micro sysclean.

You have to download sysclean, Unzip.exe, and wget.exe to a directory. Then place the bat or your ghost.exe created from Quickbatch File Compiler into that directory.

Another think I like about this is that you can still have a full regular antivirus like Avast or other free antivirus installed to do real-time scanning. This will not hinder or conflict with your regular antivirus but will allow you to run scheduled scans!

Here is the batch file that I whipped up that will download the latest virus patterns with wget, unzip them and then runs Spybot and Trend Micro Sysclean in fullsilent mode that requires no user interaction.

:: Automated batch script to run Antivirus scan and Spyware Scan with Trend Micro and Spybot S&D


:: AutoUpdate and Run a virus scan with Trend Micro sysclean

@echo Downloading Latest Virus patterns
@wget.exe ftp://download.antivirus.com/products/pattern/lpt*.zip  

@echo Downloading Latest Spyware patterns
@wget.exe ftp://download.antivirus.com/products/pattern/spyware/ssapi/ssapiptn.zip  

@echo Unziping the Virus and Spyware patterns
@unzip.exe -o *.zip

@echo Removing temporary zip files
@del lpt*.zip
@del ssapiptn.zip

@echo Starting Virus Scan
@sysclean.com /fullsilent




:: AutoUpdate and run Spybot Search and Destroy

@echo Updating Spybot
@"C:\Program Files\Spybot - Search & Destroy\SDUpdate.exe" /taskbarhide /autoupdate /autoclose

@echo Immunizing Internet Explorer
@"C:\Program Files\Spybot - Search & Destroy\SpybotSD.exe" /taskbarhide /autoimmunize /autoclose

@echo Starting Spybot
@"C:\Program Files\Spybot - Search & Destroy\SpybotSD.exe" /taskbarhide /autocheck /autofix 

/onlyspyware /autoclose

exit

When I compile this batch file with Quick Batch File Compiler as a ghost application and point the scheduled task to the created exe then the whole process runs without even seeing a black cmd box pop up. The only way that the user would even know that a scan was running would be to look in the task manager (which most of my clients wouldn't even know how to do anyway).


I'm only going to use this for certain people that I know have no idea about running scans.
It is also useful for automating av scanning for those that have free av that don't offer scheduled scanning.

-edit : Changed the way the temp zip files were removed. Thanks to bendix for the insight to be more safe.

[bendixG15]

Glad to see that you found a solution to your quest.

I do wish to ask a question.
Does not the line ..........

@echo Removing temporary zip files
@del *.zip

kill ALL zip files in that directory ?
And is that safe to do ?
Just asking... It's been a loooong time since I wrote anything.

[freebird73717]

Yep it does kill all zip files in that directory but since the only files that will be going into that directory are files I put there I am not to worried about it. This would be a directory that I created myself....

but I guess to be safe I could modify the line like so

@echo Removing temporary zip files
@del lpt*.zip
@del ssapiptn.zip

That would guarantee that only the zipped virus pattern files were deleted.

I will update my above post to reflect the changes.

-edit- Another think I like about this is that you can still have a full regular antivirus like Avast or other free antivirus installed to do real-time scanning. This will not hinder or conflict with your regular antivirus but will allow you to run scheduled scans!

[Soopafresh]

The only other issue to consider is that some virus scanners will flag compiled batch files as suspect.

[freebird73717]

I'm sure that's possible. I've used this with avast and had no problems though. I haven't tested with any other installed A/V scanners.

[freebird73717]

I smell fried SPAM.

Grave digging a two year old thread to spam. Sad.