Prevent Viruses from Infecting the USB Flash Drive or Pen Drive

The USB flash drive or pen drive are very useful portable storage devices which are very commonly used for transferring or transporting personal data or work files from one station to another, e.g. from the house to the office or for carrying around data that users intend to transfer or access in a variety of places. The USB flash drive is compact and easy to carry around. However, as the storage device is so common and easily used, the percentage of the drive being infected by viruses has also increased substantially. In this situation, what can a user do in order to prevent or reduce the risk of being infected by viruses while transporting data via the portable USB drive?

To minimize the risk of the PC being infected by viruses, it is a good practice to keep a habit to carry out the following measures once you insert or connect your portable Pen Drive into your computer. When you insert your USB Drive or Pen Drive into your PC, click cancel to close the dialogue box prompted out.
pen-drive.jpg
Now you need to go to Start\Run and type cmd to run the Command Prompt Window as shown below.
cmd.jpg
In the Command Window, type in your flash drive’s drive letter (if your pen drive is detected as G, then type G: and so on). Once you have gone in to your pen drive, now type dir/w/o/a/p and hit Enter. You will then see a list of files. Search whether any of these files appear or exist:
1. Autorun.inf
2. New Folder.exe
3. Bha.vbs
4. Iexplore.vbs
5. Info.exe
6. New_Folder.exe
7. Ravmon.exe
8. RVHost.exe or any other files with “.exe” extension.

For instance, two files are found in the following example: a.dll.vbs and Autorun.inf.
infected.jpg
If you happen to see any of the above files, just type and run the command attrib -h -r -s -a *.* as shown in the photo below:
attrib1.jpg
Once this has been done, you need to delete the files that you see. In the example above, you need to delete the a.dll.vbs and Autorun.inf. Just type in “del autorun.inf” and “del a.dll.vbs”.
delete.jpg
It’s almost done. To double ensure your pen drive is safe, perhaps you might need to scan your USB flash drive again with some reputable antivirus software. You can eject your pen drive and reinsert for using.

9 Responses to “Prevent Viruses from Infecting the USB Flash Drive or Pen Drive”

  1. Max Rort
    October 17th, 2009 23:35
    9

    It didin’t work for me.

    The dir/w/o/a/p command found autorun.ini.
    I run the command attrib -h -r -s -a *.* but del autorun.inf retourned: “It was not possible to find autorun.inf” altought it is there.

  2. martin
    May 31st, 2009 07:31
    8

    to deal with pendrive virus you must have an antivirus which is ment for pendrives i have 1 in mind for you and it needs no updates + 100% detects pendrive virus or usb drive viruses,the antivirus name is disk anti security you can get it from the below link and its free amd full version,just download and install

    http://dotnetprojects.webs.com/diskantisecurity.htm

  3. Nicole
    April 10th, 2009 23:52
    7

    What should I do if the …

    Directory of F:\
    [New Folder [RECYCLER] autorun.inf
    1 File 274 bytes
    2 Dir 7,745,957,888 bytes free

  4. vipinkrishna
    March 15th, 2009 17:29
    6

    thankyou so much for the tips!its working.

  5. How to remove the a.dll.vbs VIRUS » Software for Enterprise
    January 9th, 2009 18:17
    5

    [...] kill the virus on the external drive either get BitDefender to do its thing or follow step on this post to remove it [...]

  6. hack3r
    May 28th, 2008 19:43
    4

    u can press Shift Key continously before inserting and holding the shift key insert the pendrive

    autoplay will not function

    now scan with antivirus or manually delete using
    Mycomputer–>Right click ur Drive[..]—>Open

    simple

    hack3r

  7. technomatic
    May 16th, 2008 14:31
    3

    Great tips..

  8. Virusai jūsų USB rakte? : nežinau.lt
    January 3rd, 2008 14:31
    2

    [...] New Folder.exe, New_Folder.exe, Bha.vbs, Iexplore.vbs, Info.exe, Ravmon.exe, RVHost.exe ir kt. Ten pat rasite ir instrukcijas, kaip juos aptikti (virusų failai būna su „Hidden“ atributu) be…. Bet svarbiausia – nepamirškite geros antivirusinės [...]

  9. Kay
    December 21st, 2007 19:48
    1

    aw come on thats like pluging it and scaning
    isnt there any auto matic software that sits on the usb, to keep it clean?
    NOD32 scans it as soon as you plug it in your PC, but the main thing the drive will still get the whole load from the infected PC
    it seems likeit multiplies byitself :S

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