2 ways to Disinfect your Infected Pen Drive
Friday, Aug 8th, 2008 By Satbir Singh
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As Pen Drives viruses are quite popular these days, it sometimes happens that neither the virus in the pen drive gets deleted even after showing hidden files in Windows Explorer nor it lets format the pen drive using normal Format Pen Drive option in Windows Explorer.
Usually the virus sits in pen drive and runs automatically when you attach the pen drive and will prevent anything from running which may remove it.
But there are two ways which i found to get rid of this problem. Forget about Antivirus, most pen drive viruses are not caught by Anti Virus softwares.
1. Format From DOS
If you are unable to format the pen drive(of course after backing up data from pen drive) from Windows Explorer, then DOS is the way to go. Start run (Window key + R) and type cmd and press Enter.
Now type in FORMAT X: /FS:FAT32 /Q /V:PenDrive, Replace X with the drive letter of Pen Drive and press Enter, this should format your pen drive and the virus would be gone.
2. Use a Linux Box
Other solution to the infected pen drive is view the contents of pen drive using a Linux System. As most of the viruses affect Windows PC’s, it is very unlikely that pen drive virus may be effective on any Linux system. When you’ll view the contents of infected pen drive from Linux Box, you’ll be able to spot the virus and delete it permanently. I used this technique to disinfect pen drive of my friend using Ubuntu.
(Thanks for the tip: Simar)
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16 Responses to “2 ways to Disinfect your Infected Pen Drive”
Some more ways.
Use Free Commander, This prog has the capability to show the files which windos cannot. Migrate to the root of the pen drive. Usually there is an autorun.inf file. Open in note pad.here you get to know the name of the exe file this will execute. Start regedit. Delete all the regs with that name. Come back to the pen drive through Free Commander. You will be able to delete the exe and inf file. I have tried this many time. Hundred percent secessful. I have done it remove maskrider, Driveguard.exe etc
@Dr. Hamid
Thanks for increasing our knowledge
nice post i ever thought of using ubuntu, although i love having viruses and trying to remove them.
another trick i use is if u have installed windows media player 10(not 11) u will have option of opening pen drive as portable media device, using this we can view all files( and if hidden and system files are on that too will be shown) but no file can b executed by itself nor even by u if u try, to run an exe file from it we have to copy it on hard disk. surely very useful where u can see all files open autorun by copying and delete all suspicious files.
Hi
In my pendrive have virus when we connected the pen drive folder is not open but his icon shown in taskbar. so i want to format it but i forget his drive name so how i could solve this problem.
Please suggest.
-manish
the 1 tip is very useful but the 2 tip was little complicated will u explain it in a better way with an example
@victor: The second tip is applicable for Linux users as most pen drive viruses are exe files that won’t run on Linux system and can also be viewed and removed in File Browser of Linux system easily.
Hi,
I know how to format my pendrive but i forget the pen drive when it’s open in folder in my system(means which in folder it was opened like G:, H:…etc.).
Please solve my problem …
Thanks
I don’t have access to any computers that use Linux or Ubuntu. I tried formatting the pendrive using Dos, but it didn’t work. It simply showed an error message saying :Error in IOCTL call. Please help!!
@Aanusha: IOCTL call error shows up when drive is not connected properly to the USB port or there is some hardware problem with usb drive or usb controller. Try plugging in your pen drive to another USB port, may be it’ll solve the problem.
i have a transcend v30 flash drive. it was working fine though but recently the flash drive is showing a message of “please insert a disk into drive H:” when i try to acess it through windows explorer. it also give the same message when try to format it , in properties it shows 0bytes used & 0bytes free! Plz help….!
umm…help anybody ?
my pen drive( 2gb moserbaer) also shows the message:”please insert a disk into drive H:”. I tried formatting using DOS but i got this message..”Insert new disk for drive I: and press ENTER when ready”..Is there any hope??
Nice tip. I am getting pendrive problems I think i recieved a better solution from you now.
my pen drive drive( 2gb transcend)please insert a disk into drive i:”. I tried formatting using DOS but i got this message..”Insert new disk for drive I: and press ENTER when ready” this is the message can u plz help me.mail me vinchiru@rediffmail.com.thank u
PLZ HELP ME I GET THE MESSAGE ”Insert new disk for drive J: and press ENTER when ready” WHEN I tried formatting using DOS . ..WHAT TO DO NOW ITS OF NO USE.. LET ME KNOW ..wacky70@gmail.com
I have Iball 4 GB usb , i tried it formatting using DOS but the same msg appear as posted by Vinay and Dee
“Insert new disk for drive I: and press ENTER when ready”
any working solution will highly be appreciated,, thanks ..
rameshvashisht@gmail.com