Many times your windows PC/laptop’s normally gets virus(any type of malware like trojan, worm, spyware) because of Pen Drives or USB devices (Even PC’s who are not connected to network ). Many virus exist like Ravmon Virus , Heap41a worm which are not detected by many antiviruses normally and spreads mostly by the Pen Drives using autoruns. You are seriously recommended to disable your autorun feature on your windows computer. But if still your PC and USB is infected with virus you cannot control over them. In such a case what can you do to prevent your PC from getting infected with Virus that spreads through USB devices or Pen Drives ?

You can protect your PC by just following the simple steps below . It won’t take much time.

Connect your Pen Drive or USB drive to your computer . Now a dialogue window will popup asking you to choose among the options as shown in the figure. Don’t choose any of them , Just simply click Cancel.
*Now go to Start–> Run and type cmd to open the Command Prompt window . (On windows 7 , vista or later search for run using search option from start menu).
*Now go to My Computer and Check the Drive letter of your USB drive or Pen Drive . ( E.g. If it is written Kingston (I:) , then I: will be the drive letter .)
*In the Command Window ( cmd ) , type the drive letter: and Hit Enter ..
*Now type dir/w/o/a/p and Hit Enter
*You will get a list of files . In the list , search if somethings like the following do 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
9. Images.bat or any other files with .exe Extension. (I mean the executable files that should not exist you think)

If you find any one of the files above , Run the command attrib -h -r -s -a *.* and Hit Enter. Now Delete each File using the following Command del filename ( E.g del autorun.inf ) .

Now just scan your USB drive with the anti virus you have to ensure that you made your Pen Drive free of Virus. You should also find out suspicious hidden folders where malwares hide themselves instead of root location as above. Remember it’s only one way to remove viruses from a infected removable memory disk. There are some other methods to do it. And this can be very backdated method to remove viruses from USB sticks. In future more effective tips on blocking removable disk viruses will be available on TechGainer.

Author: Edlis Renyta