Hi all,

I have an idea of running Ubuntu desktop in my workpalce and using winxp inside of vmware just for the various virus/spyware removal tools. Anyone thinks it's a good idea?

Because I don't think there are any cross-platform anti-virus/spyware programs out there, mainly because of the poor ntfs write support. Say installing clamav isn't gonna remove viruses if you mount a w32 hard drive, maybe even the definitions are different?

thanks

I doubt you really need it, as there are very few *nix viruses out there. I'd suggest you read some of the threads in the security forum about running a virus scanner on Linux. A Eindows virus cannot usually infect a Linux machine (though I think there are some corner cases with Wine).

If you're running a file or w-mail server serving Windows clients, then a virus scanner is a good idea. However, that is for the protection of the clients, not the server, and would be working on the Linux filesystem.

I'm sorry, i think i didn't explain the purpose I had in mind.

It's one station for doing virus removal for customers in a repair shop. Like hooking up hard drives to the computer and scanning /removing virus/spyware from them. Right now we do it with winxp, but it gets slow real fast, we have to format it every few months, and our ISP just froze are internet connection us because we had viruses. We also do data backup, and since some threats are not active, they aren't always detected.

So I was thinking of hooking up the hard drives for virus scanning the same way, but instead, doing it inside a windows virtual machine, that way it doesn't corrupt the main machine, we can just re-copy an original clone.

But I don't know whether that's really a good idea or not.

thanks