How to Remove Virus from Thumb Drive

As everybody knew, most virus attacks spread through thumb drive. The annoying thing is even sometimes you scanned the thumb drive thoroughly with anti-virus software; it’s failed to remove the virus from thumb drive. So, how you gonna remove it?

Thanks to the hacking workshop that I attended 4 months ago, I learned an alternative way to remove virus from the thumb drive, even without using anti-virus software. By using command prompt you can do more than just remove the virus from thumb drive.

1. Click Start> Programs> Accessories> Command Prompt
2. A black window will popup with words like this
• “C:\Documents and Settings\User Name>”
3. Find out what is the current thumb drive’s drive letter. As an e.g its G:\KESH in picture below.
4. After that type G:\ and press Enter.
5. Type attrib and press Enter, it will show all files in current thumb drive along with its extensions. You can see certain files have SHR or HR or any of them in front of the files name. As you can see in picture below, SH G:\autorun.inf – SH are attributes for that file. (*s means system files, h mean hidden, r means read only. You need to clear those attributes from that file in order to delete the file.)
6. After that, find any suspicious or unknown files in that list. In my thumb drive, virus.exe sounds like a threat, type attrib –s –h –r G:\virus.exe and press Enter. (put – in front of the attributes will remove the attributes. E.g -h means remove hidden attributes.)
7. Press Enter and those attributes will be removed. You can type again attrib and press Enter to check whether the attributes are removed or not.
8. Since the attributes are removed, type del G:\virus.exe (this command will remove the virus from thumb drive)
9. Double check again whether file is deleted or not by type attrib and press Enter again.

An alternative way that I learned, hope it’s helpful. If you got another alternatives or ideas don’t hesitate to drop some comments and share it with others as well.