Computer malware can spread from any two-way storage media such as a USB or Thumb drive. Many thumb drives can be placed in “read-only” mode in order to allow you to read information from the thumb drive without putting your storage media at risk for infection from an unknown computer. If you have to transfer files to or from a USB stick, its highly recommended to scan the drive with an anti-virus program before accessing the data stored on it. If you do find yourself with an infected USB drive, the following steps will help you clean the virus from the drive:
USB Virus Removal Steps
Some common USB drive viruses are: “Ravmon”, “NewFolder.exe”, and “Orkut”. Although many anti-malware programs can detect these viruses, they may not be able to fully clean your USB drive of the malware. To remove the infection:
Step 1 – Restart your computer in Windows Safe mode by depressing the “F8″ key during the rebooting process.
Step 2 – Insert the USB drive into your computer. When the “Autorun” menu loads, select the “Cancel” menu option to prevent the virus from executing.
Step 3 – Open the MS DOS prompt on your computer by selecting “Start->Run” and enter the word “command” in the search text field. On Windows Vista you will type “command” in the search text field visible from the Start menu selection.
Step 4 – Enter the drive letter for your USB drive on your computer at the DOS prompt followed by the “Enter” key. This is commonly the “E” or “F” drive on Windows computers running Vista with backup drive partitioning configured. If you are unsure, open the “My Computer” icon and view the drive letter label.
Step 5 - View the files on the thumb drive by entering dir /w/a at the command prompt and you will see a listing of all files on the thumb drive. Examine the listing of files for ones that end in “.exe” that you did not place on the drive. “Heap41a” is one example of a malicious .exe file you will find on some infected thumb drives.
Step 6 – Enter the following command at the MS DOS prompt: “attrib -r -a -s -h *.*” followed by the “enter” key. Then, type “del” followed by the filename of the suspicious .exe file and the “enter” key.
Step 7 – Scan the USB drive with your anti-virus program and remove all infected files on the drive that remain after manually deleting the suspicious files. Many times this will consist of the “Autorun.inf” file that runs on insertion in the computer of the USB drive.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
