How to remove Virus from USB Drives
One of the ways by which a virus can infect your PC is through USB/Pen drives. Common viruses such as ’Ravmon’ , ‘New Folder.exe’, ‘Orkut is banned’ etc are spreading through USB drives. Most anti virus programs are unable to detect them and even if they do, in most cases they are unable to delete the file, only quarantine it. Here are the things which you can do if you want to remove such viruses from your USB drives
Whenever you plug a USB drive in your system, a window will appear similar to the one shown below
Don’t click on Ok , just choose ‘Cancel’. Open the Command Prompt by typing ‘cmd‘ in the run box. In the command prompt type the drive letter: and press enter . Now type dir /w/a and press enter.
This will display a list of the files in the pen drive. Check whether the following files are there or not
- Autorun.inf
- Ravmon.exe
- New Folder.exe
- svchost.exe
- Heap41a
- or any other exe file which may be suspicious.
If any of the above files are there, then probably the USB drive is infected. In command prompt type attrib -r -a -s -h *.* and press enter. This will remove the Read Only, Archive, System and hidden file attribute from all the files. Now just delete the files using the command del filename. example del Ravmon.exe. Delete all the files that are suspicious. To be on a safer side, just scan the USB drive with an anti virus program to check whether it is free of virus or not. Now remove the drive and plug it again. In most of the cases, the real culprit turns out to be the “Autorun.inf” file which mostly gets executed when someone clicks Ok in the dialog window which appears above. Thus the infections can spread
Security Tip
Disable the Autoplay feature of USB drives. If you disable the Autoplay feature of USB drives, then there are lesser chances of the virus spreading. A tool which can perform such a function is Tweak UI. Download it from here install it.
Run the program. Now you can disable the Autoplay feature of the removable drives as shown above. By following the above steps, you can keep your USB drives clean. If there are any other methods which you use, then share it with me through comments.
@madhu
disable the auto run feature of pen drive and then insert it.
If anyone is unable to delete a file on USB drive , try performing the steps in the Windows Safe Mode
[...] If you are still suspicious about the existence virus files on your pen drive, you can remove virus from your pen drive through command prompt by the method suggested by Madhur here in this article [...]
hey thanks , i cud remove kinzaa.exe through ur advice.
I have done as you suggested, but it will not allow me to delete kinza.exe and autorun.inf
Can you please help me?
Thank you
I deleted the file from the command prompt, but when i scan it using the AV, it still appears in the Quarantined List.How can this be solved?
I havent got the solution as the describe method.
it can not remove Microsoftpowerpoint.exe and also autorun.inf
KIndly suggest me the solution with screen shots.
@Dianna
Try performing the above steps in Safe Mode. IF ti doesnt work, then format your USB drive. Hope it helps
@inferano
Sometimes, when the AV quarantines it file, file cannot be deleted. Or some viruses replicate pretty quickly . Try formatting the drive
@Darshan
Perform the above steps in Safe mode.
hi,
i tried to remove the New Folder.exe virus folder from my pen drive according to your steps but not success.when in cmd i m giving dir/w/a it is showing this virus folder but while deleting it is showing folder not founded so please give me some solution. from last 1 vk m suffering……
i still couldnot remove any files
I have a virus called “asry.exe” its usually spreads through USB.plz tell me how to romove this virus