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Due to the disappearance of DOS-based AV solutions, AVDisk is not developed anymore. The information on these pages may be outdated and is provided for reference only.

Note: These are the annotations for the current v9.x series of AVDisk. If you are looking for the old notes to v8.x, take a look here.

Version 9.0 has introduced FreeDOS as its disk operating system and thus does not rely on the host machine having DOS (or Windows 9x) installed. It should work on any version of Windows (or even pure DOS) and has the option of scanning NTFS volumes.

There are some drawbacks, though: The created floppies may not be usable on all systems and not all antivirus programs may work correctly. This is due to the fact that FreeDOS is not yet 100% MS-DOS compatible and there's nothing we can do about that.

If you should experience problems along these lines, your only choice may be to go back to a v8.x version.

Thus, here are some notes on the current version along with some frequently asked questions:

What do I need to make scanning of NTFS volumes work?

Why does my system hang during boot from the floppies created?/Why does the prorgam xyz not work correctly?

Do I have to uninstall and reinstall AVDisk if I want to update to a newer version?

Why does my computer fail to boot from my floppy disk set?

Why is there no support for Norton Antivirus?

How do I use the professional version of NTFSDOS with AVDisk? (deprecated)

Why can't AVDisk find my installation of ESET NOD32?

What do I need to make scanning of NTFS volumes work?

To scan NTFS volumes, you need NTFS4DOS Personal by Avira. As we are not allowed to distribute NTFS4DOS alongside AVDisk, you will have to download the program yourself (see Download).
Just install the software you have downloaded to your computer and run the AVDisk setup program. If you have already installed AVDisk, simply place ntfs4dos.exe from the NTFS4DOS installation folder in the AVDisk subfolder of your AV program (and overwrite the file there). Then run the disk creation process as usual.

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Why does my system hang during boot from the floppies created?/Why does the prorgam xyz not work correctly?

Most probably the FreeDOS solution used on the floppies is not yet compatible with the software/hardware combination you use. You can either hope for a new version of you AV program that does not cause this problem or a new version of FreeDOS that clears some incompatibilities. Alternatively, if you do not need scanning of NTFS volumes and still have a DOS/Win9x system, you can get the old v8.x version on the Download page.

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Do I have to uninstall and reinstall AVDisk if I want to update to a newer version?

This depends on the version you use. If your previous AVDisk installation is older than v9.0, you should delete the AVDisk folder first before you install the new version. This is useful just to keep the system clean of old program leftovers.
If you have v9.0 or newer, you may simply copy all files into the already existing AVDisk subdirectory of your AV program. (Of course, you may also use the standard way and run the setup program again, this does not do any harm.)

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Why does my computer fail to boot from my floppy disk set?

It might well be that your computer is set not to boot from the floppy drive. If you have other bootdisks at hand, try them as well. If the computer still does not boot from floppy, it's most probably due to a setting in the system's BIOS configuration. Messing around with these options should be done with great care. Make sure to consult your computer's/your mainboard's manual, as the ways to get into the BIOS configuration screen and the names of the options can vary immensly from system to system.
Entering the BIOS setup screen is in most cases done by pressing a specific key during the early bootup phasis (while the computer counts the amount of the memory installed). You will see a message like "Press xyz to enter setup", where xyz can be any key. In most cases, the key is something like DEL or ESC or F1.
As soon as you have entered the setup screen, search for an option (it is probably buried below a certain menu choice) that is called "boot sequence" or similar. This must be set to have "A" before "C" in order to boot from floppy disk.
Note: It is very easy to mess up the performance of your system or even do damage to your data or hardware with certain settings! We strongly urge you to contact your computer dealer if you are not 100% sure of what you are doing.

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Why is there no support for Norton Antivirus?

We planned to add support for Norton Antivirus but quickly found out that it would require fundamental changes in AVDisk because of the way Norton AV installs itself on the hard disk.
Norton Antivirus may be supported in future versions.

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How do I use the professional version of NTFSDOS with AVDisk? (deprecated)

[Note: This information is deprecated, as Sysinternals NTFSDOS has been replaced by Avira NTFS4DOS following AVDisk version 9.3, allowing for write access to NTFS partitions.]

Since we do not have a license for NTFSDOS Professional, we can neither test AVDisk with the registered version nor provide support for it. However, a dedicated user has figured out a way that worked for him while using E-Trust Antivirus (rescue.exe in the example below). This may or may not work on your system or with other AV programs; please keep in mind that we could not verify the correctness of these instructions:

When creating the boot disk with the ntfspro setup wizard, when selecting the location, there is an advance button. You will need to click the advance button and put a check in the box. Then change the copyinfo.bat NOT to execute the ntfspro program. To run the rescue program you must type in the following command in the dos prompt...

ntfspro.exe /c:15360 /L:d "/sc:\rescue.exe d:\*.* /f /e /r"

The /c:15360 sets the cache to 15MB. ntfspro can use up to 64MB but this was as hi as i could go on my system
The /L:d sets the drive letter to d.
The /s tell which program to use the ntfspro program with.

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Why can't AVDisk find my installation of ESET NOD32?

Chances are that you have a copy of the v2.x series of NOD32 installed. There is no DOS version (known to us) of this software, so AVDisk unfortunately can only support the v1.0 DOS version of NOD32.

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