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My pen drive might be infected with virus/malware. I'm running Windows 7. I never stick it into an unsafe computer but this time I had to (because of some urgent work). I haven't inserted it into my computer since then. The pen drive currently does not hold anything important. I have Avast antivirus (free) installed.

I want to be able to use it again (not urgent this time). What should I do?

The pen drive contains a .pdf file, a .docx file and a .ico file. If I ensure that autorun is disabled and format my pen drive immediately after inserting it, would it be safe? Or is there still some chance that some malware might creep into my computer.

I don't want my computer to get infected and if it is unsafe to plug it in, I will not use that pen drive.

Dave
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Eklavya Sharma
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3 Answers3

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Autorun should be disabled so it's safe to plug it in on a W7 machine.

This article shows how to re-enable it, you can easily work it backwards to ensure yours won't execute.

Bypass disabled autorun for USB devices on Windows 7

Community
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Dave
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About security, we should always have doubts. Having an up-to-date system and antivirus sotfware, and being sure of what you're doing help in most of the case.

That said viruses are designed before anti-viruses know about them (obviously), and some security flaw might exist in the USB subsystem. A firewire device have uncontrolled access to all the memory by it's design for example.

But statistically one thing is sure: you've way more chance to have a virus designed for Windows (especially after having plugged an USB key on a Windows computer) than any other OSes, another thing is that other OSes often have policies to disallow "normal" user to harm the system.

Knowing that, you can use a GNU/Linux Live distribution to save the file if they are important then format the USB key. Using a LiveCD should disallow any harm to your installed operating system, but if you still have doubts, you can disconnect your hard drive. Then (normally) nothing can happen

But nothing is 100% secure: if someone designed a virus specifically made for GNU/Linux which by an unknow security flaw can at the same time run an untrusted binary and get the superuser access, then add a virus to your BIOS (so it requieres being compatible with your hardware and knowing your BIOS' structure), then, perhaps your computer can be infected. That's very unlikely to happen.

piernov
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I would give you a simple solution for this. All you need to do is, start your computer in safe mode with command prompt.

Insert your Pen Drive

Go to your drive location. (Assume G:/ is the drive letter assigned)

In CMD, Type the following commands

G:/ (Hit Enter) , you will be taken into drive G:/

dir (Hit Enter), All the files and directories will be listed.

Check the list if anything suspicious. Delete the folder or file that seems to be malicious.

To delete entire folder , you may refer this link https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1965787/how-to-delete-files-subfolders-in-a-specific-directory-at-command-prompt-in-wind

To delete file,

del [drive:][path]filename

delete [drive:][path]filename

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Stephen
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