Manually Delete Virus from your Pen Drive

Hi Friends!

Many of us are afraid to open a friend's pen drive on our system as we are afraid that it might contain Virus(or other malicious files) and as our Antivirus software is not updated/ we have just formatted our system/we don't have any Antivirus software at all !!/blah blah, we request him to get the pen drive cleaned up and then plug it into our system. Phew!

Now here's a simple trick using which you can see what files are present in your disk. After that, if you feel that certain files are dangerous/unknown, Google it out, you will get the necessary information and take action accordingly.

Let's get started:

Step 1: Open Command Prompt(cmd)

Step 2: Type the name of the drive you wish to check(say F:) and press enter

Step 3: Type 'attrib -s -h -r -a' and hit enter

Step 4: Notice all files that come into picture. If you already know what they are: Cool; if you don't, search in Google about that file.

Step 5: From Google, you found out that this file might be a trojan/autorun.inf and you have to delete it.

• Type del 'file name' (quotes are used when your file name contains spaces) and hit enter.
• Repeat for all suspicious files. Some of them are: Ravmon.exe, ntdelect.exe, New Folder.exe, kavo.exe, svchost.exe, autorun.inf

Good job Mike! you are ready to Explore your pen drive.

Now for the technicality, let's dive into the attrib command:

attrib command is used to change the attribute( or properties) of the file. Some common attributes are: Read/ Write permissions, Archive etc

Here, we have changed the attribute of files in the drive to

      -s: turn-off the System attribute
      -h: turn-off the Hidden attribute (with +H option, hidden files will not be shown in directory listings)
      -r: So that you can Read/Write/Execute that file
      -a: turn-off Archive attribute (files with +A option are available for BACKUP and XCOPY
           commands)

Now, we are done. We know how to scan our USB, delete suspicious files, and Explore the device. So, next time don't dishearten your friend, use USBs freely!

College students sharing/transferring movies, this may help you(It helped me!).

Feel free to leave a comment if you want to add something.