scanning harddrives which had windows 7 installed

[thebluesky]

I have installed Mint 14 Cinnamon recently onto my external hard drive. I bought my laptop which had Windows 7 already installed on it.I have used the same windows 7 for over two years so I think I have got some viruses because it shuts down without notice very often these days .So I would like to ask if I can scan windows files ( or all the hard drive which had windows 7 installed ) for viruses via Mint 14. I can see/use the files on the drive in my laptop while I am running Mint on my external hard drive.so I thought I can them too.Is it possible?
I would like to try out Clam antivirus and what are the things I should know before installing an linux anti virus on Mint?

thanks

[jungle_boy]

Yes, you can scan windows files for viruses, via Mint14. You can try ClamAV for Linux.