Unbeknownst to me, the US Government put out a document on this same subject just days before I put up this page (Recovering from a Trojan Horse or Virus). These instructions are better.
If you need to run a web browser from removable media (that is, a program that does not need to be installed on the hard disk) I know of two:
On the low end, there is Off By One, a single, standalone EXE that supports all versions of Windows
On the high end, John Haller has created a Portable Firefox. As of September 2005, the latest version was 1.0.6. Alternate link
A reader of this page suggested Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE). It lets you boot from a CD into Windows, totally bypassing the corrupted copy of Windows. This lets you run your favorite malware removal software unmolested. I'll have to look into this. For more on Bart PE see: A Must-Have Repair And Recovery Tool by Fred Langa August 8, 2005.
Another reader of this page suggested the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows which is a bootable CD with software to repair, restore and diagnose computer problems. All the software is freeware and it uses Bart's PE (above). It does, however, require a Windows license. Then too, there is the Ultimate Boot CD.
Spybot v1.4 can run from a Windows Pre-installation Environment off a boot CD. I have not tried this.
Credit : Michael Horoz :http://www.michaelhorowitz.com/removespyware.html#stop
