Free YOUR USB DRIVE FROM STUBBORN VIRUSES

By Chinmaya Sahoo

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.... of course! without using an Antivirus program.

1. Whenever you plug a USB drive in your system, an Autoplay window will appear similar to the one shown below :

2. Don’t click on any Option choose Cancel ( Win XP) or Close the window (Win 7)

3. Open the Command Prompt by typing ‘cmd‘ in the Run box.4. In the command prompt type the "drive letter:" ( i.e A: or H:), the drive refers to the name of your USB drive and press Enter.

5. Now type "dir /w/a" and press Enter.

6. This will display a list of the files in the USB drive. Check whether the following files are there or not:• Autorun.inf

• Ravmon.exe

• New Folder.exe

• svchost.exe

• Heap41a.exe

• or any other .exe file which may be suspicious.

7. If any of the above files are there, then probably the USB drive is infected.
8. In command prompt type "attrib -r -a -s -h *.*" and press Enter.
9. This will remove the Read Only, Archive, System and Hidden file attribute from all the files.

10. Now just delete the files using the command "del filename. -"

Example "del Ravmon.exe. -"

Delete all the files that are suspicious.




So that was Simple! Now you know a simple Command Prompt utility to free your USB drive of those stubborn Viruses.