Patent ID: 7549055

Claim:
A processor implemented method comprising: during a pre-boot phase of a system having a processor, an operating system (OS) loader, a file system handler, and a pre-boot virus scanner, all operated by the processor, and a boot phase following the pre-boot phase, invoking the OS loader to load an OS, invoking, by the OS loader, the file system handler instead of the OS, loading by the file system handler, files associated with a file system of the OS, scanning the files loaded by the file system handler by the pre-boot virus scanner, the scanning including attempting by the pre-boot virus scanner to determine if the scanned files are infected with a virus before attempting to store the scanned files into a memory, and assigning by the pre-boot virus scanner a virus state to the scanned files based at least in part upon whether the at least one scanned file is or are infected with a virus, and on completion of the scanning, conditionally loading the OS by the OS loader to transition the system into the boot phase, based at least in part on the results of the scanning by the pre-boot virus scanner.