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.
My compputer got infected with autorun.inf and forza orana.vbe which can’t be detected by my antivirus (avira)..please help coz when i plug in a usb drive it gets automatically infected
Hi! To Remove Autorun,
First U Have To Disable Autoplay For All Drives From Group Policy
Go To Run Type gpedit.msc
Administrative Template –>System –>Turn Off Autoplay In setting(For All Drives)
And enable It,it Will Stop Autoplay For All Drives And Autorun Cant Run
You Have To Require another One Software Require named “Free Commander”
Download It From “http://www.freecommander.com/fc_downl_en.htm”
It Opens All Drives Without Autoplaying..
install it And Delete Manully Autorun.inf It Also Shows Super Hidden Files And Folders..
EnJoYYYYYYY It……..
I try to use these tips but I get an error that my flash drive is write protectef. What can I do?
Hey!This is a great article!By the way I’m arianne I’m using Windows 7 starter,I know I have a trojan virus on my laptop,But when I connect my USB on the other laptop,It always appear, one of trojan virus is “Sexy,Passwords,Porn, etc.” How will I able to delete it?and It was passed on my USB?please If you have further answers,don’t hessitate to e-mail me at aai_0599@yahoo.com I will be waiting for your further reply! thanks!
cheers!x
My problem is that I cannot even put anything in the USB ports to do the steps above because it does not recognize anything being plugged in to them. What can I do then? Everything else on computer is fine. Note: No power outage occured. HELP
i can not do these steps because the computer says threads detected so what can i do?? because when i try to do your steps they are not visible …. please direct me from the start button
I can not remove new.exe and copy shortcut file from my computer. when i connect my usb drive to my computer it automatically display even i format usb. please direct me how to remove this permanently
if you do not have Tweak UI or any tweaking softwares, you may access the group policy editor in your registry.
Just run gpedit.msc and access Windows Components then configure the Autoplay options…
regarding the autoplay options, type gpedit.msc -> administrative templates-> windows components -> turn off autoplay
thanks for the help madhur, i was able to delete the other virus at cmd except for autorun.inf it shows: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. Can someone help???
i want 2 know how c can remove virus form my usb flash