Thread: Make your PD Virus Free

Hello Everyone,

Many of us faces problem of Virus when we attach our pen drive to others pc and we often get errors when we try to delete some files on our pc.

Here are some solution to make your Pen Drive virus free :

=> First of all it is advisable to have an Antivirus on your system that you are comfortable with, let it be AVG, Avira, Norton, Quickheal etc. By having that you can have virus free pc and if possible also install the antispyware.

=> To make your Flash Drive virus free:

• Never double click your Flash Drive

• make one folder named autorun.inf. By having that you can avoid most of the common virus problems

• Install Freeware "ExploreXP", a file manager that displays size of each file and allows you to browse multiple folders from a tabbed interface. File or folder having its size 0 can be considered as possible threat and you can delete it.

• When you try to remove that particular folder and you get error saying that "File is used by another program or user". So to avoid such errors you can use another freeware "Unblocker" that closes handles of processes to particular program.

• When you doubt that your PD is infected with virus then attach it to any machine having Linux O/S. It would automatically remove the viruses.

If you have any other cool idea then do let me know..i hope this helps!!

there is an application that monitors the data transfers as soon as a pen drive is connected to any computer.dont excatly remember the name.but search on mininova as pen drive anti virus..

main problem of virus in PD is due to autorun.inf files some antivirus program detect this file as virus.
You install Bitdefender total security it will never allow the pen drive to avto run it first ask u to scan it or not then we will open the file .

and there are many other software that u install in ur pc ,they will ask the password from u and only then we will open pen drive files so in our abscence no one affect our pc

Originally Posted by totallyfandu

main problem of virus in PD is due to autorun.inf files some antivirus program detect this file as virus.
You install Bitdefender total security it will never allow the pen drive to avto run it first ask u to scan it or not then we will open the file .

and there are many other software that u install in ur pc ,they will ask the password from u and only then we will open pen drive files so in our abscence no one affect our pc

One trick to deal with autorun.inf files is to
*create a blank file in notepad
*save it as autorun.inf on Pendrive
* mark read only


Optionally, you could also disable Autorun

Originally Posted by Gary4gar

One trick to deal with autorun.inf files is to
*create a blank file in notepad
*save it as autorun.inf on Pendrive
* mark read only
Optionally, you could also disable Autorun

The problem with autorun.inf notepad file is that somehow viruses are able to write crappy code in that though the file permission is for read only. That's why i mentioned in my earlier post to make autorun.inf folder so virus can't write anything there

Another trick is that you can make NTFS partition of your pen drive, which is more secure than FAT32. But problem with it is that whenever you remove your pen drive directly without clicking on "Safe to remove" pop up, data will be loss. So it is not advisable to do so.

another disadvantage of formatting in ntfs reduces the available and usable memory further.already pds have small capacity.

I am wondering that no one has voted, though poll is there and everyone is responding the thread..

If you have winrar installed on that PC, even that can be used to browse the contents of the PD without double-clicking on it.

Originally Posted by nilact

• When you doubt that your PD is infected with virus then attach it to any machine having Linux O/S. It would automatically remove the viruses.

If you have any other cool idea then do let me know..i hope this helps!!

Linux is an Operating system not an Anti-Virus ! ! ....... Viruses cannot effect Linux and Linux will unhide all virus Folders in ur pen drive so u can safely delete them ... because most processes need Admin permission to run the virus cannot activate itself or access any other drives in ur PC

u have to manually remove the viruses

Originally Posted by ShAdOwCoN

Linux is an Operating system not an Anti-Virus ! ! ....... Viruses cannot effect Linux and Linux will unhide all virus Folders in ur pen drive so u can safely delete them ... because most processes need Admin permission to run the virus cannot activate itself or access any other drives in ur PC

u have to manually remove the viruses

Of course, do i need to tell that it's not antivirus but O/S. As both are having different file system so it becomes easy to remove viruses from PD when we connect to Linux..

3/\/J0!

^ Thats not true ... My Linux uses the ext3 file system for the OS and all the rest of the drives are NTFS ......

The reason is that you need Admin privileges for everything ... so background viruses cannot do anything without your knowledge

Originally Posted by ShAdOwCoN

^ Thats not true ... My Linux uses the ext3 file system for the OS and all the rest of the drives are NTFS ......

The reason is that you need Admin privileges for everything ... so background viruses cannot do anything without your knowledge

Yes, you are right that one needs admin privileges for everything, but if you login with admin privileges then not and other drives having NTFS file system must be having Windows O/S.

Originally Posted by nilact

The problem with autorun.inf notepad file is that somehow viruses are able to write crappy code in that though the file permission is for read only. That's why i mentioned in my earlier post to make autorun.inf folder so virus can't write anything there

Another trick is that you can make NTFS partition of your pen drive, which is more secure than FAT32. But problem with it is that whenever you remove your pen drive directly without clicking on "Safe to remove" pop up, data will be loss. So it is not advisable to do so.

So ultimate protection is to disable Autorun

make one folder named autorun.inf. By having that you can avoid most of the common virus problems

What's the use of this ?

Originally Posted by SledgeHammer

What's the use of this ?

Generally viruses overwrite your existing autorun.inf (Notepad file) with some crappy code, but you have to delete that file and make autorun.inf folder so that viruses won't be able to write anything as it is folder..

In short you are disabling autorun of your pen drive.. but it will avoid many problems.. for rest of the thing go through my first post..

and those with U3 pendrives can use avast or mcafee antivirus installed into the pendrive itself for max security

there are softwares like pen drive security, which can be installed even in non-u3 pds.

Originally Posted by nilact

Yes, you are right that one needs admin privileges for everything, but if you login with admin privileges then not and other drives having NTFS file system must be having Windows O/S.

Drive formats are OS independent

You have an option to format ur drives using Linux before ubuntu's installation ...where u get the option of formatting drives in different formats ,But u must format one part into the ext32 where ur os will reside

Still that does nt change the fact that NTFS drives can be used by Linux

I know that and i agree with you. Actually problem is that i am not posting properly, coz i am lazy

That's the reason my post generally gets misinterpreted..